Questionnaire + Evaluation

http://fluidsurveys.com/surveys/meesh/music-magazine-questionnaire/?TEST_DATA

With my questionnaire I hope to gain a further knowledge into my audience and how they would react to the type of magazine that I aim to make. I also aim to find out the preferences, dislikes of the target audience to maybe help decide what should and should not be entered into my magazine.

Having a wide range of questions covering varied aspects of my potential magazine, my questionnaire should help me get a clearer and better idea for how the magazine could potentially.
The questions in the questionnaire also encourage the person to reveal habits, hobbies and preferences to music, magazines and other music related activities. This is useful as it helps you to get a bit of an insight into the personality of the potential readers.

Evaluation Pt 7

What do you feel you have learned about the following?

Creativity: whilst making my media product I learned that having a great deal of creativity aids in the making of magazines, due to the creative impact on designing and placement.

Originality:  when making a magazine it is essential that it is unique and original as well as specific to the magazine that you are creating.

Technology: As mentioned earlier, having knowledge on the software used and what technology goes into making a magazine would greatly improve the quality of a magazine.

Photography: Having a clear idea and plan for what pictures will be used in a magazine is key to the success of a magazine, although it is possible to take good photo’s without planning for them, all the best photo’s are very well planned out.

Layout: I learned that the layout of the magazine is really important. This is because it has to be visually appealing to an audience/reader and without a good layout, this is not possible.

Colours:  the colours in a magazine are very important as it all adds up to the appeal of the magazine and how the magazine is to reach and reflect the target audience.

Fonts:  I learned that choosing and keeping to a font style is essential In a magazine as it gives the magazine a more professional look and it allows for a ‘clean’ look on a magazine and strays away from a sloppy or trashy finish

Writing Articles: In doing this task I had to learn how to write an effective article. This is easier said than done. I learned that a lot goes into writing articles and when writing one, there is much to consider. How I will draw in my reader, how to keep the reader and also the language used has to be appropriate and preferred by my target audience.

Evaluation Pt 6

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

 During the making of my magazine, I learned that in order to efficiently use the technologies to create a decent magazine, as mentioned earlier knowledge of the technology being used would have helped dramatically.  I used PowerPoint and fireworks to make my magazine, and in not having the knowledge

Evaluation Pt 5

How did you attract/address your target audience?

The first thing that I thought about when making my magazine was the name, how would I make a name that would be recognisable and attract my ideal target audience. The name ‘the common room’ in my opinion addresses my target audience as being sixth formers and ‘hanging out’ in the common room is what they do, you can immediately associate the magazine with the sixth form. When deciding on font, I sought something that was cool and stylish to make sure it attracted my audience. I also had to take colouring into account and I chose a popular colouring (red).

Evaluation Pt 4

Who would be the ideal target audience for your media product?

My magazine is a ‘Student’ magazine, so the age range for my magazine would be 16 – 18 as I am looking to target college or ‘sixth form’ students. My magazine is meant to be a unisex magazine but does have parts that appeal more to a male audience such as my feature article. The ‘class’ that my magazine is intended for working class people  as I do not think that middle class or upper class people would have much/any interest in my magazine as there is nothing in the magazine that is target at them or could appeal to them. People that read my magazine would have to have an interest in what is going on around the sixth form and also in opinions and updates.

Evaluation Pt 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why

I envisage my magazine to be independent, this is because it is a very small magazine intended for only my sixth form, so further and wider marketing would not be appropriate. Because of this, no third party distributors will be needed just small internal distribution is necessary. As stated earlier my magazine is intended for my sixth form, therefore will appear in my sixth form common room, as my magazine is called ‘the common room’. It will reach my target audience as all of the sixth form go into the common room and only sixth formers go into the common room.

Evaluation Pt 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine represents young people as being more independent and interested in doing things for themselves. It shows how society has changed over time and that young individuals are becoming more independent, this is shown as the feature is about students seeking there own personal transportation, doing it for themselves, without any ones input. This challenges Media’s portrayal of young people as young people are often represented as being dependant on adults.

Evaluation Pt 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

In making my magazine I failed to use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products. When analysing another magazine such as ‘the student magazine’ I was able to pick out the key conventions and features that worked well as well as what stuck out to me as a reader. I believe that I failed to recreate these conventions and features due to my lack of technical expertise and time I spent in making the magazine. Not knowing how to use the different software required making a good magazine really pulled me back, it is not possible to make a good magazine with little/no experience in using the required software. If I had known how to properly use the software, I could have been able to use some of the conventions in my magazine, but in the end I came out with something that I see as a really low grade attempt at a magazine. Along with the lack of time spent on the magazine, I felt that it was really being rushed and that because of that, I was unable to learn how to use the software, create a good design and complete   the magazine to a good standard.

Preliminary Task

Magazine Analysis

Firstly, the layout of the front cover has been constructed really well and you can see how it has a general appeal. This being the April issue it was coming up to exam season and the big ‘REVISION TRICS UNCOVERED’  will appeal to students as they will want to revise and get the best possible grades. There are also other appeals to the young audience with their content choice of new gaming, music and television.

On the front cover the placement of all the different text around the main background image works really well, you see a student revising and you know they are revising as you then see ‘revision tricks uncovered’ then when you look closer around the front cover of the magazine you realise there are many other popular things throughout the magazine.

Then in the magazine it is framed similar to the one shown, with text around various images.

The target audience for this magazine are students this is shown in many ways such as the magazine being called ‘The Student Magazine’ and the content seems very modern and tailored to that of a younger audience, focusing on the interest of students.

The conventions represent the target audience as the main image, happens to be a student or what seems to be a student which shows the target audience and it also refers to revision, another thing associated with students.
 the view we get when reading this magazine is someone that has a lot of spare time and has a lot of interests in modern trends but still have a bit of an interest in their course of study.

The magazine represents the “world” of its audience as it has many objects that reflect students and their interests it appeals to their as the enterprise section shows possible careers and students as they are studying, this is what they want to achieve, a career path.

Analysing a media text

I chose the Calvin Klein Jeans advert to analyse because the other one did not seem as appealing to me.

When looking at this advert your eyes are immediately drawn to the sexual content taking place within it, this is because the creators of the advert have chosen to make this the main feature of this advert because of the shock properties of seeing this in an advert. All of the characters featured in the advert are in focus, but only three are engaged in the sexual content.

The ad is set in a room with an old looking green sofa and looks washed out and worn; this could be a reference to the washed or worn jeans the brand sells.
In terms of product placement, all four of the characters are modelling different types of Calvin Klein Jeans. This shows that the adverts sole purpose is to advertise the product and not the brand itself, this idea is backed up by the fact that the company logo only appears once in a small font at the bottom right corner of the frame.
Another thing I noticed about the way in which the products are positioned in the frame was that all of the jeans being modelled were connected to a person. This again promotes the product by emphasising one of the things these characters have in common.  

The Calvin Klein logo at the bottom right is in a sans serif font this font is considered more modern than a serif font. This links in with the fact that all of the models are young.

The models’ being young and seemingly sexually engaging creates an ideology that young people are similar to those portrayed in this advert. It also suggests that the target audience for this particular product are young people who are seemingly sexually active.

The advert connotes that buying the product will potentially make you sexually irresistible in attempt to convince possible clients to buy their product.
In contrast to this, I noticed that there is a character that has been placed on their own on the floor. Although he is near the sexual interactions between the other characters, he is undoing his own jeans showing no sexual interest toward anyone and none shown to him, this could contradict the idea that the jeans make u sexually attractive.

Reflection on my work so far

Reflecting on my research so far... (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DZP8XVV)

Looking back at the survey that I done for my sixth form magazine I feel that the questions on the content went well with my survey, as they allowed me to see what content was preferred and not preferred throughout the range of people that did my survey.
I also feel that the question on magazines available for our age group worked okay as it tells me that some could be improved in order for them to be read more.

I feel that many areas of my survey could be improved, such as;
the question on how often people read magazines could be more specific, giving a time and an amount, this question did not work very well as it is down to perception of the question, where some people could see reading a magazine once a week as not often, to someone else, this could seem very often making it hard to gather the correct information from this question.

The question on magazines available for our age group could be improved as I could ask why they aren’t happy with the magazines that are available, my question did not work that well as it was only a simple yes or no question and did not give me any feedback on improvements or preferences at all, this would have been better information for me to acquire.

In order to improve on my survey I could have more detailed questions in some areas and more open questions in others, I could also ask about the ethnic background and first language of the person doing the survey.
I feel I should also have more questions relating to the potential sixth form magazine as this will help me a lot more when it comes to making the magazine itself, as I can see clearly what is wanted, preferred and disliked amongst magazines.

I will take note of all the good points and bad points and us them to make a much better survey for my next task, as good quality research is essential to help me with my work.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DZP8XVV
Link to my magazine research survey

The Student Magazine

http://issuu.com/thestudentmagazine/docs/april_20121/1

The Student Magazine, a magazine that really seems to grab my attention and makes me want to read it despite my hatred for magazines.

The student magazine covers many different audiences and successfully creates an immediate interest.

It has many different sections including, Gaming, Fashion, Music and Sport.

This magazine targets the popular areas among students and highlights them.

the balance between text and pictures in the magazine helps a lot towards the appeal of it as you can 'watch' the magazine as well as read it.

This magazine will be good for me to look back on when it comes to making my own magazine as i inspire to have a magazine like this, that makes people who do not like magazines... want to read one.