Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In Beat Magazine black people are represented in quite a positive way. Although black people (especially young black rappers) have had quite a negative history linked to violence and such things, I think that Beat magazine portrays them as positive and good role models. The colour scheme throughout stick to the similar colours (Red, Black, Grey and White) I think that these colours have connotations of dull and negative which is very steriotypical to the black music genre but it doesn’t relate to how you feel about the artists mentioned in the magazine as the magazine makes the reader feel positive about them in other ways.
The text on the front cover is quite bright and bold and the title of the magazine is in red which has connotations of hate, love and lust. I think that it is a bit controversial as you can either love black rappers or hate them, Beat Magazine focuses on the positive side of black rappers and does not include any negativity through out. Males are represented as the more dominant sex in Beat Magazine as there is no females mentioned in the magazine, this could be seen as sexist but generally the black rap music genre does not have many female artist, it is mainly male rappers that are more well known and successful. Also on the front cover the cover model is posing in a certain way, there is a slight smile and he is making eye contact with the reader, I think this may show a bit of personality and positivity of the person which straight away catches the eye of the reader where as if the model was posing with a straight face and quite serious it would look quite bad and could connote violence.
The contents page includes images which relate to the articles and the images are very positivte in the sence that they represent those people in a good way. The image of the cover model he is posing with his tongue out which connotes cheeky and playfull. The other image is at a concert and it shows the crowd making the diamond symbol which shows that the audience are all together and there is no negativity, there is no violence in the image which does usually tend to happen at some concerts (depending on the music genre and artist) I think that generally at rap/R&B genre concerts there isnt much fighting as the people there would rather have a good time and enjoy the music.
I think that Beat Magazine changes the way the reader thinks about them and actually looks at them to be good role models; In the double page spread about Big Sean I wrote about the experience and how Big Sean's attitude was towards the success and the crowd. Although you do get a lot of famous people that take the success and fame for granted, its always good to know and recognise those who do apprieciate it. “Throughout the night he made a point of connecting with crowd including a speech about following your dreams and celebrating what you have and working for what you want. It was a very inspiring moment as it does just go to show that your dreams can come true if you work hard enough.” Thats a quote from my double page spread, as you can see it shows a connection with the artist and the audience.
Question 3: What kind of media institute might distribute your media product and why?
And Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?
Question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?
To attract my audience I decided that on the front cover I would have a bright and bold masthead and a short title so that it was appealing and attracts the eye of the audience. When asking for feedback from a small group of people they mentioned about the masthead how it stands out and is bold on the page which shows how it is noticible which is what I wanted. When planning and creating my cover page I wanted to have a colour scheme which was no more than 5 colours and I wanted it to look professional, I found it quite hard to find colours which worked well together and also colours that worked well against the cover image. I think the colour scheme was successful as some feedback that I recieved was positive and thet liked the colour scheme and one person did say that the cover page looked professional. To attract the audience I also wanted to have good cover lines that were easy to read and relevant to the magazine and genre, I dont think this was as successful as I thought it would be because the colours over lapping the image and text did seem to be hard to read from a distance, but on the other hand they were positioned good and didnt cover the face of the cover model. When taking pictures for my front cover I wanted images which were quite close up and so that the model looked at the camera so there was eye contact so that when a person seen the magazine they would be attracted straight away. I also wanted a model which related to the magazine and the genre so that straight away you could see that it was a rap/hip-hop magazine, by having my model looking up with a bit of a smile and having his collar up on his jacket shows attitude which is what I wanted and this was noticed by the audience when conducting the feedback.
To attract my audience with the contents page I wanted to include relevant images which looked good and stood out, this was successful as the feedback I recieved was positive about the images on the page as the audience really liked it and thought it was good and relevant, also the images matched the colour scheme which I think made it more appealing and caught the audience’s eyes. Once again I wanted the page to look professional so I kept the colour scheme the same as the cover page and tried to lay it out like other magazines, I put the text into three columns because I think that only having two columns isnt as good and eye catching. Also by having subtitles at the top of each column with a white box around them really makes them stand out and look professional as they were noticed and mentioned in the feedback. By having the frames around the images and also around the editor’s note just seperates the page better and generally makes the layout of the page a lot better which again was mentioned as something the audience liked.
For the double page spread I tried to attract the audience by keeping the same colour scheme as the other two pages, I did this because I thought that it made it look more professional and the colours worked well together, I tried not to use red on that page though as I think it would have clashed with the other colours of the images and also when you compare it to other music magazines they tend to not keep the same colour scheme on the double page spread as they try to make it a bit different. The colour scheme stood out on that page as one of the people from the audience feedback talked about it and said that they liked it. When thinking about the layout of the double page spread I wanted to have a bigger image on the left hand page which took up all of the page, I liked the way other magazines had done this so I thought I would do it for mine, The image was talked about when given feedback as one person said the colours of the image worked well and looked good, for the text and the other side of the page I decided to have the article in columns again with a few smaller images going down the side, I split the images up but putting a grey line in between each image and the grey colour was the same as the grey on the cover and contents page. I knew this worked well and was successful and the audience feedback proved that it was good too as it was talked about and was said that it looked good.
Question 6: What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Question 7: What feedback did you receive from the target audience?
Question 8: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
As I never created a double page spread for the college magazine, the Beat magazine double page spread was my first attempt of composing one. I think that overall it worked very well as I used all of the techniques that I had learned in my media lessons to make the double page spread using the same programmes I had used to create the front cover page and the contents page. If I were to do the double page spread I would try to focus on getting better quality pictures and also maybe change the layout so that the writing went over the two pages, but apart from that I felt happy with the final outcome of the double page spread, along with the other two magazine pages that I made.
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