Feedback From My Presentation

After designing my magazine front cover and contents page, I had to present this to the class to gain feedback. The way we did this was as a media student presented his/her magazine, the other students sat down to write comments about the magazine. I've currently got three sheets of feedback from four students. Here they are:

Sheet #1:
STRENGTHS:
"He followed a lot of the codes and conventions of a school magazine"
WEAKNESSES:
"Text needs to pop out more"
"The colours he contrasted didn't work completely"

Sheet #2:
STRENGTHS:
"Evidence of research and how it informed the planning/design of the product"
"Evidence of planning and how it informed the design of the product and production process"
"A front page of a school magazine with a mid-shot central image"
"A contents page appropriate design and content of front page"
"Explanation and analysis of the process undertaken, learning and final product"
"Lots of detail in his presentation along with a complete front cover and contents page"
WEAKNESSES:
N/A

Sheet #3:
STRENGTHS:
"Evidence of research and how it informed the planning/design of the product"
"Evidence of planning and how it informed the design of the product and production process"
"A front page of a school magazine with a mid-shot central image"
"Graphics and text relative to product, following generic codes and conventions"
"A contents page appropriate design and content of front page"
"He showed that he looked at the MOJO magazine in detail and used it for a lot of his planning"
WEAKNESSES:
"He needs to make his font stand out more and maybe use different colours"

I'm quite flattered with the feedback which I received from my fellow collegues since they mostly contained visuals on my strengths, not weakness. Although, I should think maturely and treat feedback as an opportunity to improve, therefore, I should focus on my weaknesses and plan on how I could improve or even vanish them completely.

On the feedback which I've received, the only weakness that I noticed the the class was injecting was that my colour scheme and text wasn't very effective. Even when my media tutor agreed with my colour scheme (in which she claims that black and red are the traditional colour codings for music magazines) but not the text (the headline was good but not the other headings), what I tend to do next time to discard this weakness of mine is to change my magazine's colour scheme. If I was given another chance to change my magazine, I would, and this would be easy for me because as I said in my magazine's annotation, I designed my magazine's logo to be very simple but very flexible in colour scheme changes. If I were to swap my magazine's colour coding, I would pick colours which highly contrast to each other, focusing mainly on my text to make it stand out and legible.

So anyway, I will be editing this post some time later on whenever I get my tutor's feedback because she just copied it first before she gives the paper to me. So that's it for now until the update.

Magazine Front Cover and Contents Page OUT NOW!

This post is to inform you that after all that waiting I've finally finished my School Music Magazine front cover and contents page! The images are below so you can just skip this if you're too excited and can't wait to look at the magazine. Although if you want to know more about the magazine, read on.

FRONT COVER

As from my past posts about the draft summary of my magazine (what I should've included in my magazine, how my magazine should look like, etc.), my magazine seems to have achieved quite a lot of these. The reason for a slight change of appearance is the feedback I recieved from Kelsey Park students, my collegues, and my Media tutor, Ms. Norville. Since Kelsey Park students was my target audience, I made the choice to actually listen to their feedback and apply relevant changes to my magazine according to the customer's choice.

My front cover, instead of relating to Kelsey Park Sports College's black and gold format, is a different style to the traditional school colour scheme. This, I think, is the right decision because according to the Kelsey Park students that I've interviewed (aged 11-19, three students for each age group), 20 out of 27 suggested that the school colour scheme gets too common and that they felt like a new and unique style would stand out more and they would prefer this to traditional.

The logo of my magazine is simple but flexible. Prior to this, I researched on and designed sophisticated types of logos. After a while, I noticed that the more complicated the logo is, the less it becomes legible. Ugly disadvantages that this had was that the logo made the other parts of the magazine less appealing and they had limited colour scheme for future editions. Therefore, I kept mine as simple as possible. One advantage of my logo is that since it's so simple, whenever the magazine needs a change of colour scheme, I could change the logo's colour without disrupting the corporate identity much and the customers would still recognize it. The title is named as "BEAT" to refer to music, for the magazine's authenticity, sinc the magazine is a music magazine anyway. I chose the title "BEAT" because it is a highly recognized word and most people would relate it to music. "The Music Magazine" is also added on "BEAT" at a slant position to make the effect of a smooth, relaxing flow and as an additional signifier to signify that the media print is a music magazine.

The text is made as clear as possible. The headline, "MAESTRO MEREDITH", is given alliteration, a high authority word, "Maestro", and a larger font to emphasize Mr. Meredith's power; the lines under this has two parts with texts of different style and size to inject tension onto the reader "How I survive my... Music Students". Since my target audience  are Kelsey Park students, I thought of giving away the deep secrets of a person who the students highly respected, therefore, enticing them to "read this person's mind" but not throughout (yet), just partially, to make want to buy the magazine. All of the other sell lines are titled, with a different style, font, and size for the title and text below it to make the magazine cover look more entertaining to pull in viewers.

To attract my customer's attention into purchasing my magazine, I had to think of my target audience's interests and their budget. What I did to achieve this is to present not only the school's best music stories in text, but also to add pictures about them to make the stories seem believable. I'm a loyal believer of the quote "An image tells a thousand words" you see. A fact that I know every Kelsey student would share with each other (including me) is a simple one - we're cheap. What I did to get over this problem is a psychological technique - I made the price £1.99 instead of £2.00 - this makes a person think it's a lot cheaper even if it's just really a penny difference. Also, with psychology on my side, I placed the ear piece "FREE CD!" on the top left with a very wacky text, drop shadow and exclamation mark to emphasize the opportunity of a free objects which music lovers would love. I also designed my own CD album cover and placed it here to show which CD they would get.
To make the magazine an authentic school magazine, I added the Kelsey Park Sports College logo. My main target audience, the Kelsey Park students, should recognize the logo and immediately respond excitedly because they recognise the logo and are part of it. For the merchant's convenience, I also added a barcode to speed up the selling process using EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale).

The magazine's main picture is an outward gaze mid-shot of Mr. Meredith to invite individual contact with a hint of challenge to make the viewer feel competent and want to show that he will prevail. The main story "MAESTRO MEREDITH" is positioned alone on the left side of the magazine to highlight that this is the headline and that it relates to the magazine's main picture. The logo is placed behind Mr. Meredith's photo to make the viewer feel like a natural part of an establishment - it makes them feel welcomed and familiar because the magazine doesn't seem like it is showing off, instead, it shares trustful friendship with the viewer by being modest. The KPSC logo is added at the bottom of the magazine's front cover to avoid distracting the magazine' design e.g. by disrupting the colour scheme. The barcode and school logo are placed beside each other deliberately to partly advertise the school itself subcontiously, if ever the magazine was distributed outside the school.

My magazine's mode of address is made suitable for my target audience, 11 to 19 year olds, by adding slang into it e.g. "Melodi what you tellin' me?", and "ups and downs" to make the magazine seem like a friend to the reader, not just something to read.
In my front cover, I've also applied the gratification theory to base my magazine to the traditional, and successful, magazines today. The gratification theory suggests that four specific techniques could enhance the audience's interest in the media object, these are: entertainment, information/education, personal identification, and social communication. I put this theory into use by: entertaining the reader by making them seem like they are "listening" to the magazine as it communicates with the famous rapper "Melodi what you tellin me?" this dialogue is also made slang to maximize the entertainment even more; informing/educating the reader by making them aware of a band and a music club; personally identifying the reader by recreating a conversation with the reader using the most effective direct speech word, "you"; social communicating with the reader by adding a rhetorical question "are you up for it?". The theory also suggests that after an initial impression is given to the audience, they ask for more - that's why I didn't completely give away the whole story, to urge the audience into purchasing the magazine to find out more about these interesting stories.

CONTENTS PAGE
As a contents page, it should give away part of the gratification theory, the information, but not all of it to intensify the reader's lust of the promised story until they reach the page of the story itself - think of it like not having to eat for five years - this makes the reader treat the story more special, therefore, treating the magazine even more special (that's also why I didn't add the page numbers in the front cover).

The main picture on top of the page is of the story "gadget vs gadget", I added this because it seems to have the most potential of its image being graphically enhanced to "wow" the reader instead of a plain photo of guitar - this is an attempt to make the audience idolize the magazine and want to subscribe to its future editions. The bright colour of the image is also deliberate to balance the magazine's appearance to forebode that there aren't only dark pages throughout the magazine. All of the photos added int he page are of Kelsey Park Sports College students weilding musical instruments to emphasize the magazine's rich contents. These pictures also avoids the page from having white space as it is supposed to be a page of contents.

I added red dotted lines to increase the page's appeal to the audience. The effect of the dotted lines is that it seems to appeal to people aged 11-19, as people of this age usually refuse to the plain styles that less younger people want (no offense!).




Front Page

 
 



Contents Page



Here is my PowerPoint Presentation in which I presented to the AS Media class:

Beat magazine presentation

View more presentations from robertvila315

Beat magazine presentation - Presentation Transcript (If ever you can't read some of them)
1.BEAT Music Magazine Front Cover
AND
BEAT Magazine Contents Page

2.RESEARCH FOR MUSIC MAGAZINES

3.The Magazine Name – I got my idea from
Here’s where I get music covers from

4.The Magazine That Caught My Eye

5.FREE CD!
Pictures in rectangles
Mid shot picture of headline
Photo in a circle
CD Cover shown

6.The Front Cover
My front cover, instead of relating to Kelsey Park Sports College's black and gold format, is a different style to the traditional school colour scheme. This, I think, is the right decision because according to the Kelsey Park students that I've interviewed (aged 11-19, three students for each age group), 20 out of 27 suggested that the school colour scheme gets too common and that they felt like a new and unique style would stand out more and they would prefer this to traditional.
The title is named as "BEAT" to refer to music, for the magazine's authenticity, since the magazine is a music magazine anyway. I chose the title "BEAT" because it is a highly recognized word and most people would relate it to music. "The Music Magazine" is also added on "BEAT" at a slant position to make the effect of a smooth, relaxing flow and as an additional signifier to signify that the media print is a music magazine.
The logo of my magazine is simple but flexible.
One advantage of my logo is that since it's so simple, whenever the magazine needs a change of colour scheme, I could change the logo's colour without disrupting the corporate identity much and the customers would still recognize it.

7.The text is made as clear as possible. The headline, "MAESTRO MEREDITH", is given alliteration, a high authority word, "Maestro", and a larger font to emphasize Mr. Meredith's power; the lines under this has two parts with texts of different style and size to inject tension onto the reader "How I survive my... Music Students". Since my target audience are Kelsey Park students, I thought of giving away the deep secrets of a person who the students highly respected, therefore, enticing them to "read this person's mind" but not throughout (yet), just partially, to make want to buy the magazine. All of the other sell lines are titled, with a different style, font, and size for the title and text below it to make the magazine cover look more entertaining to pull in viewers.

8.A fact that I know every Kelsey student would share with each other (including me) is a simple one - we're cheap. What I did to get over this problem is a psychological technique - I made the price £1.99 instead of £2.00 - this makes a person think it's a lot cheaper even if it's just really a penny difference. Also, with psychology on my side, I placed the ear piece "FREE CD!" on the top left with a very wacky text, drop shadow and exclamation mark to emphasize the opportunity of a free objects which music lovers would love. I also designed my own CD album cover and placed it here to show which CD they would get.To make the magazine an authentic school magazine, I added the Kelsey Park Sports College logo. My main target audience, the Kelsey Park students, should recognize the logo and immediately respond excitedly because they recognise the logo and are part of it. For the merchant's convenience, I also added a barcode to speed up the selling process using EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale).
To attract my customer's attention into purchasing my magazine, I had to think of my target audience's interests and their budget. What I did to achieve this is to present not only the school's best music stories in text, but also to add pictures about them to make the stories seem believable. I'm a loyal believer of the quote "An image tells a thousand words" you see.

9.The magazine's main picture is an outward gaze mid-shot of Mr. Meredith to invite individual contact with a hint of challenge to make the viewer feel competent and want to show that he will prevail. The main story "MAESTRO MEREDITH" is positioned alone on the left side of the magazine to highlight that this is the headline and that it relates to the magazine's main picture. The logo is placed behind Mr. Meredith's photo to make the viewer feel like a natural part of an establishment - it makes them feel welcomed and familiar because the magazine doesn't seem like it is showing off, instead, it shares trustful friendship with the viewer by being modest. The KPSC logo is added at the bottom of the magazine's front cover to avoid distracting the magazine's; design e.g. by disrupting the colour scheme. The barcode and school logo are placed beside each other deliberately to partly advertise the school itself subcontiously, if ever the magazine was distributed outside the school.

10.I put this theory into use by: entertaining the reader by making them seem like they are "listening" to the magazine as it communicates with the famous rapper "Melodi what you tellin’ me?" this dialogue is also made slang to maximize the entertainment even more; informing/educating the reader by making them aware of a band and a music club; personally identifying the reader by recreating a conversation with the reader using the most effective direct speech word, "you"; social communicating with the reader by adding a rhetorical question "are you up for it?". The theory also suggests that after an initial impression is given to the audience, they ask for more - that's why I didn't completely give away the whole story, to urge the audience into purchasing the magazine to find out more about these interesting stories.
My magazine's mode of address is made suitable for my target audience, 11 to 19 year olds, by adding slang into it e.g. "Melodi what you tellin' me?", and "ups and downs" to make the magazine seem like a friend to the reader, not just something to read.In my front cover, I've also applied the gratification theory to base my magazine to the traditional, and successful, magazines today. The gratification theory suggests that four specific techniques could enhance the audience's interest in the media object, these are: entertainment, information/education, personal identification, and social communication.

11.The Contents Page
As a contents page, it should give away part of the gratification theory, the information, but not all of it to intensify the reader's lust of the promised story until they reach the page of the story itself - think of it like not having to eat for five years - this makes the reader treat the story more special, therefore, treating the magazine even more special (that's also why I didn't add the page numbers in the front cover).

12.The main picture on top of the page is of the story "gadget vs gadget", I added this because it seems to have the most potential of its image being graphically enhanced to "wow" the reader instead of a plain photo of guitar - this is an attempt to make the audience idolize the magazine and want to subscribe to its future editions. The bright colour of the image is also deliberate to balance the magazine's appearance to forebode that there aren't only dark pages throughout the magazine. All of the photos added in the page are of Kelsey Park Sports College students wielding musical instruments to emphasize the magazine's rich contents. These pictures also avoids the page from having white space as it is supposed to be a page of contents.

13.I added red dotted lines to increase the page's appeal to the audience. The effect of the dotted lines is that it seems to appeal to people aged 11-19, as people of this age usually refuse to the plain styles that less younger people want (no offense!).

14.Take A Look Fully

15.CONCLUSION
AFTER MAKING THE MAGAZINE
>I’ve gained a lot of inspiration from the MOJO magazines including their style
>I’m more mature on paying attention to detail
>I’m more aware of the graphical software that designers use to make products
>My taste for media has intensified

Music School Magazine

As Ms. Norville informed me, this is my last week for designing my School Music Magazine front cover and index page. Referring to my last post, I've taken "some" photos of the music people, what I'm planning to do now is to take more photos of the other people who I actually intend to add in my magazine's cover. Apart from that, I've got nothing else to worry about because I've already formatted my magazine's layout.

Picture taking!

 

Today I've just been taking photos of people from the music department - students and staff alike (they look decent now but they were high in the room). At the moment I took these photos which has to satisfy me for now because of the inconvenience of the science exams which the other students are taking.

At least I got was I was planning to achieve today - which is to take some photos of the music people in this school with an additional bonus of Mr. Meredith's picture, a music teacher and Head of the guild Brunel wearing a poppy. Due to the poor lighting of the room, the pictures look quite low quality but sometime in the future, I should edit them.

OMG! After that tiring (but enjoyable) holiday from Italy, I've finally got back to doing some research...

As usual, I'm in the quest to search for different kinds of music magazine covers for my evidence of research. While I was doing research, I stumbled upon a monthly magazine website. That one and only magazine is called Mojo. What I took advantage of most to this magazine is the convenience of its website, where you can look at most (if not all) of their past magazine covers. Here's the hidden link: http://cover.mojo4music.com/ <= trust me, its right here
And they don't only show the magazine, they also explain what's in the issue - this could give me ideas on actually how, what, and why I would add codes and conventions in my magazine.
If you were to aks me, this has been the most useful link I've ever had concerning my Media course, and I have Mojo to thank for that. Whew!

Magazine Cover Research

The main task that I will be doing is to design a magazine’s front cover including a content page. The type of magazine I’ve chosen to design is a music magazine which is targeted to students in Kelsey Park Sports College. Any person interested in music should be my target audience with the age span of 11 - 19.

Initially, I thought this task would be easier the more research I do.

The very first step that I took was to understand the codes and conventions of different magazine covers; how they use them, why they use them, and what it is for from normal lessons with Ms. Norville to give me more ideas of the professionals’ techniques.

I took some reference from books about Media Studies which I read like a bedtime story and note down on paper or phone some key terms to broaden my knowledge of the subject in general. I’ve also used the internet to get evidence from the magazine designers themselves for back-up quotations later on when annotating my magazine.

For magazines in general, I noticed that they mostly use one main picture which relates to the headline to attract their audience immediately. Of most magazines I’ve seen, magazine journalists seem to adopt a mode of address particular to that magazine and aim to construct a bond between the magazine and its audience. For example, the front cover of Sugar (October 2001) includes the following cover lines: ‘Will your name make you a star?’, ‘Boys Uncovered! Discover what he secretly thinks about you’. Such cover lines ‘speak’ to the audience and mean that they not only recognize that you are being spoken to but feel that they are members of an exclusive club.

The tehcnique that seems to be the msot effective in encouraging teenage readers is using the "teenage language" in a magazine as the mode of address which seems to be slang. this makes the teenagers feel like they aren't left out and someone like them is addressing them.

A technique that I've also notice that most journalists use to encourage teenage readers is the main picture of a famous icon on the front page with a caption to pull the teenagers in.

I’m planning on targeting boy students aged 11 – 19 because this age span seems to be perfect for the budding musicians who admire their idols. Since it is an all boys school, my niche audience is more narrow so it will be easier for me. I chose this certain age span because it will be easier to make a review through the whole school for some evidence.

The main content that I should add to attract the audience’s attention initially is a mid shot picture of a well-known music icon with a catchy (possibly using a pun) caption about that music idol. Since I cannot really take my own photo of a famous person, I’m planning to dress up like one.

I could add an advertorial of cheap music equipment for sale to entice the readers to buy the magazine by them wanting to find out more about this. Possibly a quote like “get a limited edition…” to get the audience excited.

I may also add the most interesting cover lines I could think of to gain my audiences’ attention. Cover lines such as “Linkin Park visiting Kelsey…” could be one.

Since it seems that I can make-up stories, I could also add at least one exclusive story to gain my audience’s respect and loyalty.

The techniques that I could also stretch out are my magazine’s house style and mode of address which I need to take notice of, to relate to my target audience. With the influence from other magazines, I could make my magazine’s mode of address slang and second person.  I’m also planning my magazine’s main colours to be blue to connotate a relaxing, lay-back mood.

Most of the text in my magazine’s front cover and contents page should be in bold and sans-serif to reduce damage to the magazine’s layout. Some circular cropping could also be added for style and space saving.

These techniques may change in the future because I could inquire more information in the future.

iASIAN Magazine Cover

So after a few days ago my 'A' Level media instructor, Ms. Norville, asked us to design a front cover for a magazine. Today is the deadline for the assessment. That's why I'm writing this post. Here's my textual analysis for my magazine's front cover:

My magazine falls into the category of teenage technology magazine. The niche audience that my magazine should attract are: asian ethnicity; teenagers; Christian religion; and middle-classed.

To achieve my magazine's purpose, I designed my magazine to have a brand identity naming it "iASIAN," in relation to "iPad," and "iPhone" with the small "i" to present authenticity to the technology magazine. I added captions to all the images I added. The "JACKY CHAN VS JET LI" head line with a typeface in bold with a scratchy red texture to reveal a violent genre and in sans-serif to overlap with the images behind them. Then I put the text "in" with smaller text and different colour and below it, the Mario Kart Wii logo to add humour to the magazine and make it seem to have a friendlier mode of address to the audience. I just added the images of these two famous people to attract initial attention for anyone who knows them.

Since most middle-classed people (which is part of my niche audience) are familiar with the iPad, I thought of adding this advertorial to add more authenticity to the technology side of a technology magazine. I made the caption for the iPad, in sans-serif, to have a slight teenage language and also used the term 'must-have' to make the magazine's mode of address be somewhat modern. Also, I changed the next sentence below's graphic colour to green with the word "free" to attract people to grab the magazine.

I added a few advertisements on the bottom of the magazine showing Christmas and family holidays to lure in part of my target audience: Christian religion people.

At the top of my magazine's front cover, I added the text "FREE! POKEMON CARD FOR EVERY READER!" with the graphic "FREE!" in different colour to initially catch the reader's eye. The main objective of this, however, is to hook people in who are fond with pokemon, which is quite popular. Thus, increasing my audience.

Overall, I think my magazine's front cover fulfills all the objectives needed.

Second day of this blog's existence. So what's happening?

Last night I've been looking at the "Print Glossary" that Ms. D Norville gave me. I think I'll be able to use some of the terms in the future. So here are some terms that I never knew even existed:
Outward Gaze - usually towards the consumer, inviting intimate individual contact;
Super-Smiler - full shot of face usually with head thrown back, challenging the reader;
Chocolate Box - slight parting of the lips but with all important smile; head slightly turned.

All of these are types of a front cover image (The image you usually see infront of print media) which I didn't know the term for but knew how they were used. It's like the corner of your eye until you turn to it and daft about, 'Oh, so that's what it was!'

What I'm currently upto...

Is that I'm trying to keep up-to-date with this so called

"Big Brother"

to be able to analyse the latest title sequence. And so far so good! ^_~

I've started this blog because...

It's for my Media A Level course! :D
For you all who asks "What is an A Level Media course?" it's just really for my studying... My wonderful Media teacher (D Norville) asked me to start up a bloggin page... and so I did.
Now,

So far so good!