I have asked Charlie aged 20 a few questions about my music magazine. This sound cloud shows his answers.
Category Archives: Evaluation
Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My magazine represents the social group of ‘Blingers’. This group comes under the genre ‘urban’ which fits in with my R&B/hip hop genre magazine. Blingers can be anyone who enjoys R&B/hip hop music, although they are mostly described as younger youths. This is suitable for my target audience of people aged 16-25. 
The stereotype of Blingers is that they have a ‘faux gangster’ style. Although as you can see my model in the image is female and so does not portray a gangster style, but I still believe my magazine represents this social group by the cover line articles, title of the magazine, and the music artists featured in the magazine. The model in my image is however posing and looking into the lens of the camera. This shows she has a slightly fierce and fearless attitude, which is what you would expect of a Blinger.
This example of Vibe magazine shows that even if the genre of the magazine is R&B/hip hop, the model in the image does not have to portray this by the clothes they wear. The model in Vibe’s image is Nicki Minaj who is a female rapper; although you would not know this by the clothes she is wearing. Just like the model in my image is not wearing stereotypical Blinger (or urban) clothes, on the cover, contents page and double page spread.
Another way that I have attempted to present this certain social group, is by the genres of music advertised and involved in my magazine. Featuring artists such as Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Drake and Professor Green represents people who are interested in R&B/hip hop (Blingers). I also think the age of the audience for these artists are around 16-25, which is what the target audience is for my magazine.
The title of my magazine ‘Volume’ I believe also represents this certain social group. This is because the world volume suggests playing music loud, which is what Blingers are known to do. R&B/hip hop music is also known to be quite loud with a big bass.
I think the model in the image in my double page spread represents Blingers as she is posing in a bold and sassy way, showing she is quite rebellious and not worried about what people think of her. This is typical behaviour of Blingers, and so I think this image represents the social group well.
Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
When first creating my magazine I did not know how to use any of the programmes, although now I am able to use them effectively. When creating my magazine I had to use Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop and WordPress, which I had never used before.
The first new software I was introduced to was Adobe Photoshop. I had never used this editing software before, so I had to learn quickly. An example of when I used Adobe Photoshop is when cutting out my cover image so there was no background; therefore I used a tool which allowed me to selectively remove the background. I did have some trouble with this, although after some help from video tutorials on YouTube I figured out how to do it.
The image on the left is the original image. The image on the right is after I cut out the image leaving no background. I also changed the settings so the image was in black and white, and adjusted the brightness of the image so it wasn’t so dark.
After I had edited all of the images, I imported them into Adobe InDesign. From here, I could add text to my design to create the rest of my magazine. I also had never used Adobe InDesign before, and so everything was new to me. However after playing around on the software, I managed to work things out. For example, I learnt how to use the kerning tool to remove gaps in between text.
The image on the left is before I learnt how to use the kerning tool to space the text correctly. The image on the right is after I learnt to use the kerning tool.
I also learnt how to stretch out text, make letters in the text closer together, angle letters in the text and add a stroke (line) to the page. In the letter ‘V’ of Volume I have angled the letter by 8° to help establish a brand image for my magazine.
The second image shows that I have angled the letter ‘V’ in Volume.
WordPress is the main programme I used to present my progress and to post images of my music magazine. This programme was also new to me.
WordPress also allowed me to gain feedback, which helped me in the development of my magazine. WordPress was where I stored and organised all of my work. Not only could I upload text on my WordPress blog, I could also post images, videos, polls and questionnaires.
Learning how to use polls was a great advantage in the construction stages of my magazine. I used a poll to find out what peoples opinions were on different masthead titles. The one with the most votes, I chose to name my magazine.
This image shows a poll I did on my blog.
Evaluation
After creating my music magazine, I am going to use several types of media to display the self evaluation. The following questions are the questions I am going to answer.
Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Q3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Q5. How did you attract/address your audience?
Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
tsmithchs 