Niamh Sygrove Media Coursework Blog 2016: March 2016

Wednesday, 23 March 2016

Final Post

Dear examiner,

I hope you enjoy reading through all of the posts on my blog and looking at the work that I have produced over the past couple of months. I have labelled every post to ensure that it is easier for you to navigate around my blog posts in a smooth, straightforward fashion, and I have carried out my research and planning with a great sense of interest and a lot of hard work and effort, which I hope comes across in both my blog and my final product. Overall, I have enjoyed the course greatly and I'm sad to see it come to an end. Once again, I hope you enjoy my posts as I had a great time creating them. Thank you.

- Niamh.

Sunday, 20 March 2016

Final Magazine

Saturday, 19 March 2016

Preliminary Task Reflection

How does your preliminary task represent particular social groups?

My preliminary task represents the different social groups from both a male and female teenage perspective. As my magazine was targeted for Lutterworth College and its students, its main target audience would be those who attend the school, but there is the possibility that a teacher or another member of staff could read this magazine too. Due to Lutterworth College's school colours being blue and white, I decided to interpret this into my work, by including the logo with those representation colours, and kept all of my text except for the different sections headings white. The use of white text maintains the uniform look towards the magazine, and also stands out greatly against a darker white/grey background, as I included a fading black outline around the text to make it more captivating to the eye. Throughout the cover and contents, I have used capitalization for all of the text besides the word "magazine", to show the urgency of all of the text that is spread across the two different designs. My image of a stereotypical school student represents the working student body as a whole, portraying Lutterworth College and its pupils as a very sophisticated and well organised community. The image and the entire layout of the magazine is layed out in this particular way to bring the idea of maturity and excellence to the forefront, something that Lutterworth College intend to do as a whole anyway. I have made it very obvious through the image and certain headings that my intentions for this magazine were to portray the running theme of school only, keeping it precise and informative to those who fit my target audience.

Who would be the intended audience for your product?

My intended audience that I would expect to read my magazine are teenagers aged between 14-18 who attend Lutterworth College as either GCSE or A level students. It can also be approached by teachers and other members of staff who work at Lutterworth College, but would not find it as interesting as the students due to its content. I chose this target audience range simply because I am a student from this school myself, therefore I had a great idea as to what people my age would be attracted to magazine wise if my school were to ever create their own magazine in the future. Because I attend this school, it also means I have a great background knowledge on multiple things that occur around the school, including things like after school clubs, opportunities, different subject matters etc.

How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted my intended target audience by making sure that all of the information in both the contents and the cover page were things based upon Lutterworth College, the school in which they attend, and would find either/both useful or/and interesting to read. I have made sure to widen the audience range within the school, by including different elements like sports for all those who either play for the school or are interested, and other extra curriculum activities for those who may be interested in that too. I've also included the entire school student body as a whole by including things like homework and exam information/articles, things that every single student will have to go through at some point whilst attending Lutterworth College.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learnt how to use Photoshop to a greater extent, as I have had experience in the past from using it from previous media work during GCSE, but feel like I have a better understanding of certain tools as I have grown to use it more for my A level work. Whilst before I believed that all magazines had to be completely full to be deemed as a "successful" magazine, I know longer believe this is true from looking at magazines like Clash and i-D, and have took inspiration from both in creating a lighter, and more spacial magazine layout for this task. I have also learnt a lot more about taking the "perfect" photo for the front cover, that allows the reader to become drawn to the cover with a lot more ease and feels intrigued towards what is featured there. Lighting and location are extremely crucial and key when it comes to creating a successful image and magazine overall, along with space within text so it doesn't look cramped, but not too spacial so that there are white spaces everywhere.

Friday, 18 March 2016

Preliminary Task: Photoshop (College Magazine)

The plan I created for my preliminary college magazine:

The final cover I created for my preliminary college magazine:

The layout of the cover is much the same as my flat plan idea, although I decided to leave out boxes that would be placed behind the text that I had planned, because I thought this would make the cover look too cluttered and would take away from the simplistic example I was going for. I decided to use a very simple and readable font that can be associated to American football teams, so as to appeal to the target audience of college students, and, also due to the genre of the magazine, I placed an image of a student central to the piece. I chose the colour scheme - white and black - so as to keep in tune with what was most common, as I thought this would be my safest bet to begin with. Although, my model was standing in front of a grey/dark white background when I took this photo, and so I decided to keep this as an extra colour tone, as I thought it pulled away from the common look slightly, but still looked quite professional. Due to what the model is wearing, however, I don't think I should have kept the background the colour that it is, as her jumper almost camouflages itself into the background, and so this is something I can learn from and will have to be aware of in the future.

The final contents page I created for my preliminary college magazine:

The layout of the contents page is a lot different to what my first ideas were, as you can see from my flatplan. This was mainly due to the fact that I planned my preliminary to contain a plain background with a lot of text covering it, but I felt like that wouldn't be appealing enough to the viewer from their first glance at the magazine. Thanks to my new contents layout, the page matches the theme of the cover page a lot more, keeping a neat consistency that any good magazine should have. Next time, I would make the text smaller however, as it is slightly too large in sections, and covers part of the model that I didn't want it to do so. I kept the colour scheme the same from the cover page, which I think works well, but some of the text in the top right hand corner of the magazine is barely visible, and so I would have to think more clearly about this next time.

Thursday, 17 March 2016

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Created with Microsoft Paint

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted my audience through my cover page, as it would be the first thing they would encounter. To do this I used an artistic, experimental image style with a graphic design background that wasn't conventional for a stereotypical magazine cover, however it fit my young alt audience because they like to stand out from the crowd, just like my cover page does.

The image and the page design is so different from the rest of the magazines on the stand, that I believe makes it even greater because it stands out just from being considered 'abnormal'. It may intrigue people because of its great differences and even if it doesn't cause someone to open it up and read all its contents, the cover page is definitely likely to grab attention of those walking past it from its bright colours and unique background designs. However like previously stated, young alts would definitely consider grabbing this magazine and reading it as they want to stand out from the mainstream crowd and experience something new and entertaining.

My audience - young alternatives - would be addressed directly by the model I have used for the cover page, through the pose choice and clothing. My model isn't looking straight at the camera like they would do in every other magazine, as I wanted my cover artist to reveal a hint of mystery within their artistry, and this draws young alternatives in as they want to discover what this artist may be hiding through their lack of eye connection with the audience. This alone creates a greater identity for the magazine and an even better bond with young alternatives, as they want to stand out, and they certainly will stand out if they grab this magazine and read it because the majority of the mainstream public wouldn't do so.

Some of the artists I have featured on the side of the cover page certainly address and grab young alternatives into my magazine as well, as they may read the name of an artist that they like (all of the alternative genre) and might want to read further into the magazine simply for them. I have also made sure that I have chosen alternative artists that will attract different age ranged alternative audiences, for example, Halsey may bring in a younger audience whilst Lana Del Rey may bring in an older audience.

Wednesday, 16 March 2016

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Evaluation Question 4 is answered in the form of a website that I created on a program called Wix.

The link for the website is placed underneath the screenshot preview of my website/answer below...