MELISHA'S FOUNDATION PORTFOLIO

My media product uses several typical conventions such as title block, puffs, central image. However, it challenges and develops the features to make them look different from existing magazines. The title block uses a unique font that is rarely visible in existing magazines, also the range of colours which develop throughout my magazine, and the central image which has a graffiti background which is not a common feature in other magazines. I wanted to make each feature stand out in an appealing way to catch the readers eye and draw them in. I chose to challenge the typical features as the theme off my magazine is punk, anarchy which represents no order and being individual. Using this theme i would change some of the typical conventions, such as the puffs on the cover which reveal all different fonts and text positioning showing no order.
My magazine positively represents the target audience who are into 70's punk music, male and female, British 15-30 year olds. My article feature is based on a girl who represents this audience. I also included sub-genres in my magazine such as Ska which consists of a fusion of punk and reggae. This represents another social group who are into Reggae and Ska. I tried to make the reader feel welcome using the cover, the central image has a slight distance to draw in the reader to look closer, but the person in the image has a direct mode of address indicating a personal relationship with the reader. Punk has a multi-cultural audience but most punk bands are typically Caucasian, Ska is a multi-cultural genre, taking this into consideration i decided to develop the idea using an Asian girl on the cover. I chose to aim my media product at 15-30 year olds as i find that most people who like this music today are from this age group and it would be a wider audience to target.
After researching publishing institutions i found that IPC would be the best suited institution to distribute my magazine. This is due to their previous work with rock magazines such as NME, also because their magazines fall into mainly the niche market instead of the mainstream, my magazine is the same. As NME is a successful magazine which also has a radio station, website and a TV channel, this shows that the institution would benefit my magazine in making it something more huge. IPC magazines are read by more than 44% of UK readers, so this institution will be good for reaching my target audience and other British IPC magazine readers. This media institution would be more likely to distribute my magazine rather than Development Hell which publish two monthly magazines whereas my magazine is released weekly.
My media product is aimed at male and females from ages 15-30 in the UK, who are familiar with punk rock or Ska music. I chose this target audience as there is no other magazine that aims at this sort of audience, there is a gap in the market for it as most music magazines are targeted at a specific gender e.g. rock magazines are usually aimed at males. This makes my magazine different from others as it doesn't use this typical convention and is aimed at both male and females. I chose to aim the product at 15-30 year olds as i find that many teenagers and young adults are into the music my magazine features, punk music has some explicit content and a mentioning of politics and freedom; these sort of aspects are more appealing to people of these ages. Another reason i chose this age group is because i wanted to reach a wider audience. To make my magazine appeal to my audience I have addressed readers with content that they will most likely relate to such as the bands The King Blues and The Sex Pistols, these bands are from the genres i have chosen to feature in my magazine: punk and ska. The King Blues is a recent ska/punk band that teenagers are more likely to be familiar with, The Sex Pistols are a 70's punk band that are appealing to teenagers but more familiar with young adults, they can also relate more to the issues raised in their lyrics. To attract my audience i have used a unique font, style and layout that reflects the style of my magazine. For example, the title block is in a ransom-note styled font which is an iconic feature of the punk era. The central image on the cover is quite eye catching with its stand out colours and graffiti background which makes it look different from other magazines.
During the process of constructing my media product i have learnt how to use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator successfully. At the beginning i found the programmes hard to use and would struggle in editing photos. I eventually was able to do this and was successful in and editing the brightness, saturation, colour temperature and resizing images. Using the website http://www.1001fonts.com/ i was able to find a font suitable for my magazine and as my Photoshop skills were developing i was soon able to touch up and edit it for my magazine. Before my Photoshop skills had developed i was not very successful in creating fonts and found it hard to change the colours and outline the font, this i soon picked up on which helped me create a successful title block. As i found Photoshop easier to use, i used this programme for most of my production work. I also found that Blogging is a good way of getting feeback on work, Blogger.com allowed me to receive feedback from piers and my teacher which helped improve my work along the way. On this website i could create polls which was helpful for deciding what font to use. It also allowed be to view other classmates work which helped me to keep on track in what i had to do.
Looking back on my preliminary task i find that i have learnt much more throughout the progression of it to the final tasks. Analysing other magazine covers, contents pages and articles helped with making my magazine. It helped me understand the layout conventions which i challenged and developed in my own magazine. The location for my final images was eye catching and looked even better after editing the images in Photoshop. I learnt of the typical conventions used in the magazines i analysed and went against them in my own magazine such as a house style and colour scheme. This also helped me on how to attract the audience such as title block, puffs, eye catching central image and bands featured on the cover. In the preliminary task i did not consider the importance of these features. Sending out questionnaires has also proved to be helpful as it helped me on deciding on certain aspects of my magazine such as title block, price, genre and other important conventions. Analysing other successful existing magazines has helped me throughout the construction of my product and also gathering feedback from my target audience.