Final Production of Amplitude

Evaluation Questions: 7 Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Before creating my music magazine I was set a preliminary task of creating a school magazine as you will be able to see in my first couple of posts. Or even below. By doing this it gave me a clear insight to what was up ahead and even though they were quickly drafted up it still took me awhile to get used to the software. Also you can see that the pictures aren't the best photos compared to my final Music Magazine photos but that makes it easier for me to establish the progression I have made in this course. The purpose of this prelim task was to give us an insight to the software's as I've mentioned but also to see how much time and effort that has to be put in to create the best product possible.

Because of the challenge I knew I had ahead I decided to research more into how to use the software's which were InDesign and Photoshop as I wanted my magazine to be the best I could possibly make it so I watched a few videos on YouTube and also checked out a few blogs just so I knew what all the tools were in each program and how I could use them in my creation of my products and it taught me a lot that I wouldn't of known about if I never did it. Another bit of research I did was looking at other competitive magazines in the industry as I wanted to see how they lay their magazines out and how the theme plays into the whole magazine.

 

Another step that I took in progression to create my final outcome was to create many mini drafts for each page that I was creating as this way I could pick out all the parts that I thought would suit my audience and try to play with them all to fit into the whole of my magazine and it also allowed me to make less mistakes with the software's because I had it all planned out and I had a vision of the final product in my head which really enhanced my final outcomes of my magazine.

 

Overall though I believe that I have achieved a lot more than I expected and it is all down to the time and effort that I put into creating it but also the research that I did behind the creation which made the product possible. Creating a magazine is a lot harder than it looks as sometimes what you want doesn't always agree with the software so you can find yourself fighting with the product to do something which I didn't expect but I came across which became very frustrating as I continued to create my magazine. By completing this task though gave me a sense of achievement and has also give me a better over view of Media and also Business which will help me in my other studies and to conclude maybe with a bit more professional help and time put to make the magazine more professional editing the little parts that may not be selling point that I could possibly be able to compete with other competitors within the industry in stores as well as online.



 

Evaluation Questions: 6 What type of media institution might might distribute your media product and why?

For the publisher of my magazine I would like to use IPC Media as according to the media and internet resources they are the leading consumer magazine and digital publisher. Which I believe would be really useful when putting a new magazine into a competitive mass market as they are well established and known by a big variety of audiences. So with the right marketing and advertising I believe that this magazine could be a big hit within the industry.

 

For the distribution part of the production I would like to offer my magazine as both a physical printed copy but also up for a digital download as through my research I have gathered that internet shopping and digital downloads are increasing due to household tablets, phones, laptops etc. able to connect to the computer with broadband speeds getting quicker therefore I would put my products up for both digital downloads and the traditional methods of in-store shopping. Such retailers I would like to put my magazine in are the high class stores such as HMV, Waterstones and WH Smith, these three mainly as they are well known for their mass sales with similar products, and then also supermarkets such as ASDA and Tesco as these stores would have a variety of different audiences coming in and viewing the product which could encourage the sale.
 

To conclude, because of IPC being so well established and being reliable over the many years, I wouldn't be able to choose another company and also they have more than 60 iconic media brands so I would use IPC as a distributer as they are known to create content for multiple platforms. Which would mean I would have to create a digital format copy as well as the physical copy which is what I want to do anyway but this also puts my in the ranks to compete with other music magazine companies as I have a specific audience and it is fresh in the stalls which could be the difference. So by distributing through IPC gives me the chance to publish the magazine in many different buying 'positions' which many people would prefer due to their needs.

 

 

 

Evaluation Questions: 5 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When creating my mag I wanted to make sure that I used parts and examples from other magazines to help my create the best magazine possible as well as being able to support and back my ideas up if people where to disagree.

The example to the right shows how I used different products to create and develop my own it is clear that there is a lot of editing that has been put in place to create the effect but without the editing it would of created a photo that could of been extremely stereotyped if I wasn't careful so that's why I am backing it up as I recreation from a photo-shoot done by the one and only Biffy Clyro.

The reason behind me recreating the specific photo is that I wanted to create a front cover photo that can catch my audience eye and by making a photo slightly provocative I believe if this was on a shelf next to a different magazine with the same genre that this magazine will be seen first due to the photo being bold. Another reason for using this photo is that I liked the way the Q magazine presented their magazine and therefore I wanted to do the same to give my mag a sophisticated look rather than a grimy look that some magazines give off.






Overall though my belief of this project was to take on board different magazine products and ideas and also criticism from my fellow peers to create the best product possible. I also believe in a challenge and challenging systems and software's just like Photoshop which helped me recreate this photo you see above but all together in order to create a modern sophisticated looking magazine that would be able to sell in stores as well as to be digitally downloaded by anyone willing to.

Evaluation Questions: 4 What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

One example of technology that I used in the process to create my product is Adobe Photoshop which allowed me to uniquely edit my photos to how I wanted them such steps that I took when editing my photos differed from easy techniques like improving the brightness  to moderately hard techniques like using the clone stamp to remove any imperfections that I didn't want. 

The Photos to the right shows the before and after of my editing within Photoshop that I did to create my front cover photo and as you can see there has been a lot of editing put in place to create the effect I was looking for. I used such tools like the burn tool which allowed me to give the bruise effect on my models because I wanted them to look intimidating rather than three band boys acting up for the camera. Also because of Photoshop I was able to add a police back board through adding a new layer and sending it to the back to add to the overall effect however it made the photo look unrealistic so I decided to add shadows to my three models and edited the whole pictures lighting and contrast so that both the photo and police board would contrast well together.

 

 

Another example of technology that I included in my creation of my magazine is Adobe InDesign which is a professional software that is a widely-used program for page composition, design and production. It is usually used by graphic artists and digital publishers choose InDesign when they want creative control in manipulating page elements, mainly text and images, in single or multipage documents.

Within my work it allowed me to set out all the of magazine to how I wanted it in my mock up so it really contributed to constructing my end magazine product which I wouldn't of been able to do without the software.

The last technology I used to produce my product is Blogger, which allowed me to publish all my magazines production step by step from the beginning not knowing much about software's to the end hopefully producing a high quality product.

If I did not discover these technologies I wouldn't of been able to produce my product and also I wouldn't of been able to learn about the software's and produce a music magazine to a possible professional standard.

Evaluation Questions: 3 How does your media represent particular Social Groups?

When creating my magazine I wanted to stick to my target audience as much as I could possibly because if I went off track I would of just created a magazine with now specific purpose or audience which would cause a lot of confusion as there could of been parts that would of targeted a certain group of people and then others that could of supported a completely different social group. Because of this predicament I could of been in I made a Questionnaire so that I would receive different results that would help me decide what to make my products purpose and audience and so I decided to go and create a magazine with the purpose of attracting Indie/Alternative/Rock lovers therefore I had the job to represent these three possible Social Groups in a certain positive way so that I wouldn't offend them in any way. The techniques I used to represent these Social Groups was I used language that I had found in the NME mag I had researched and also based my interview language and text on the type of language I read in a slightly more sophisticated magazine Q. All in all though I represented my specific social groups in ways that they would be known under like the colours I've used for my tag lines and title as this way it justifies my target audience as well as representing the social groups in such a way that it concludes with helping distinguish my target audience.

Evaluation Questions: 2 How did you attract/address your audience?

As well as including big and bold taglines like 'THE FUTURE IS LEAVING' I also tried to use other techniques such as page folios that would match the theme colour and title of the product I have created as this way it just helps the magazine look more modern and helped me with addressing my audience as my target audience isn't for people who are slightly informal it is for the more modern people out there that like a bit of professionalism.