Representing

Representing

My ideas on my magazine represent school life because it shows what a certain group of teenagers share in common and therefore they would read my magazine to have a feeling of belonging to that certain clique.
It also represents the music industry well because it shows what people are interested nowadays and what the most favoured genre of music is, therefore the industries would know what could sell and what needs to be released.

My magazine is similar to a real magazine because it incorporates many features of magazines. These would include:

• Pictures
• Connotations
• Reviews
• Contents page
• Double page feature

The type of person my magazine would appeal to would be a reader who has a very good interest in the rock genre, however my magazine would definately exclude younger readers and also people who have interests in other genres of music such as Pop and R n B.

Overall I am pleased with my magazine front cover and double page feature as well as my contents page because I feel i managed to convey the essence of rock throughout everyone of thsoe as well as creating interesting designs which would appeal to my readers.
If I was to re create anything it would be my front cover, I would have liked to include more pictures and made my title of my my magazine bolder so that it could stand out alot more.

Using technology

Using technology- creative tools

I used photoshop alot in my work because I felt I could achieve alot more when I used it. I used photoshop for editing my images because with photoshop I could change the colour balance, red eyes , background and size of my images. Also when I used photoshop I had access to a wider variety of interesting fonts which I would never have been able to access on a normal windows computer. However there were drawbacks, because I was working on a MAC computer I was not used to the layout and how to work the photshop programme on it so I had to spend about two lessons just to familiarise myself with everything.
I found Micrsoft Publisher very good to compose my double page spread on because I could get two pages next to each other and see clearly the layout of everything and found it alot easier to make sure everything would print well.
The only time when technology obstructed my control was when I first started using photoshop because I did not understand how to use it because everything was so differently set out.

Working in media production contexts

Working in media production contexts

In my research and design stage I first used the internet to find background information on my chosen rock magazine company called Kerrang to find out what can be found in a rock music magazine. When I took my images i tried to take interesting photos so I chose interesting costumes which were the masks which I found in a drama studio, also I wanted photos that would make the buyer of my magazine smile so I decided to get non serious photos in the style of a band named 'Bowling for Soup'. To edit my photos I had to use photoshop to edit the images by removing red eye and the background in each image. I had to do this to all my photos for both my school magazine and music magazine.
I managed my time by making sure that I spent about two lessons on my own photos and taking them and then about two more lessons being in other photos for my classmates. I also worked on my research and written work at home to make sure it was up to date.
My photo shoot went very well. I wanted to have a dark background to create a very good contrast with the band members for my front cover. I wanted three band members who were male because when I think of a very good rock band I believe men are better suited to the hard core rock style. The choice of costume was for the band members to wear some black because that is a colour associated with rock and I also chose masks because bands like Slipknot have masks but I wanted a humourous side so decided to find masks in our drama studio which had different funny personalities on them. There were some photos which I decided to not use because they were either blurred or just looked inapropriate for a rock magazine.
I created two versions of my music magazine, I did this because I created a version one and then sent out a questionare asking people's opinions of my version. Then based on my results i created a final version, I ended up changing some of the images, the size of the text and the layout of my cover line. I did this to create the best version possible for my magazine so that it was as good as it could be and that it incorporated what the target audience wanted.
Overall I feel I managed my time efficiently because I used as much lesson time as well as after school to complete all my work and I feel I stuck to the task at hand very well in each lesson.

Working with existing forms and conventions

Working with existing forms and conventions

My school magazine relates to other existing magazine examples because they have many things in common such as displaying issues to do with school life as well as images of school and it involves the students that attend the school. However my school magazine is different because I have a mise en scene which means that my magazine is in fact only aimed at a certain group, they are the sixth formers.
My music magazine is the same as other magazines because I have a specific layout, colour scheme and have all the latest news about the hottest bands on the scene. The music magazine is different though because I have one main featured band on my front cover and only two other bands whereas others magazines would show more bands on their cover lines.

The conventions which I have included in terms of my designs are as follows.
In my school magazine I have included a direct mode of address to make my magazine seem more personal. I have also incorporated a mise en scene which means my magazine was only aimed at a specific target audience which were teenagers.
In my music magazine I have also incorporated a direct mode of address and a specific house style in a rock theme.
In my uses of colour I have used colours relevant to what my magazien is about. In my school magazine I used bright colours to appeal to the audeicne and also to make it seem interesting. My music magazine however has a specific colour scheme which was taken from 'Kerrang' magazine which is a rock magazine, my colours which I used were black, white and red and green.