Evaluation of Media Coursework

For my media coursework, I designed a music magazine; cover, contents page and a double page spread, for women age 13 to 19. The genre that I selected for my magazine was funky-pop.

I named my magazine ‘BLAST’ as funky pop is usually blaring loud and also because its also very catchy.

Conventions are elements are you would expect to see in a magazine. Despite having used conventions such as: masthead‘Blast’, attractive and appealing colours ‘flourescent pink, orange and navy blue’ and the ‘ginger-red’ hair on the model/artist, strap lines ‘free poster inside’ and most importantly a large picture, I have slightly challenged the conventions too. My magazine is aimed at the pop-punk minority. A typical cover page of a pop-punk magazine would consist of a rather wacky image of a bad of a single artist, whereas my magazine cover consists of a rather subtle image of a pop-punk girl, listening to the radio in full ‘BLAST’.

My media Product represents a particular social group that is; girls aged thirteen to nineteen. How I did this by using a very eye catching image of a girl dressed in pop-punk clothing, and is calmly listening to loud music, and thus the name ‘BLAST’. The presence of a girl allows me to imply that she is representing the all the young women that enjoy pop-punk music, and the fact that she is calm and attentive implies that this magazine is also aimed older teenagers, that is; eighteen and nineteen years old, as she looks mature and able to listen to blaring music. The artist/model is wearing a simple navy blue top, black tights with a funky gold chain and a grey-blue beanie hat. Her dressing also suggests that she is young and thus aiming at the teenagers. There is great use of the colour ‘pink’ through the whole magazine, suggesting that its aimed at young females.

I would like IPC Media publish and distribute my media product, as they have of thirty years of experience and because they have great experience as they produce over 85 iconic media brands. They also do not publish any ‘funky- pop’ magazines at the moment and this could enable branch open. IPC Media also publish the ‘NME’ which is has a similar aimed market to ‘BLAST’. IPC media is well recognized in Britain and they also use diverse print and digital portfolios. Their core audiences are: men, mass market women and the up-market women. As my magazine is aimed at teenage girls, and IPC media is recognized for publishing for the ‘mass market women’ and the ‘up-market women’, they would definitely know how to get around young ladies.

The audience for my media product would be pop-punk lovers and females aged thirteen to nineteen year old. Why I decided to select this type of audience is because I thought it would be challenging as not many magazines are out for the pop-punk minority and for females especially.

In my front cover, I managed to attract my audience by having an image of a young pop-punk artist, who is a female. I also used very eye catching colors such as the background was of black and the shades of blue. Beginning form black around the frame of the images, navy blue then royal blue and then sky blue. They merge in well, and produce a great contrast with the ginger-red hair of the model/artist. Another small, yet attractive element is the red label on the plug-in of the stereo system. It produces contrast as the red label is on a black background and makes it eye catching. The stereo itself, being enormous makes it attractive to the audience. The ginger-red tint on the model/artist’s hair brings in some sort of diversity of colors and makes it appealing to the young ladies who enjoy pop-punk.

In my contents page, I used loud and contrasting colors such as shocking pink, orange, white and navy blue. This automatically attracts the audience. The colorful strip going vertically is vibrant and young and looks energetic, suggesting that this magazine is mainly for teenager.

My double page spread is wild and ‘funky’. The background is of a toned down forest-like abstract. It also has a large image of a famous artist, allowing the magazine to attract young women. I also used a variety of colors for the text, in order to emphasize certain text.

Through this media coursework, I have got to understand and experience the use of technology immensely. To produce our media product we have to use a desktop publisher such as Adobe Indesign and Adobe Photoshop. Using these two desktop publishing software, itenabled me to develop and produce quality creative content, it also allows me to easily reuse assets for online and mobile publishing, it integrates seamlessly with my other publishing and content management tools that I have used, it can be customized, scaled, and extended to meet my

evolving needs, offers faster, more reliable performance day in and day out, continues to innovate so you can stay state-of-the-art. I have definitely learnt a lot more about ICT though this media task.

Looking back at my preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt to use Indesign and Photoshop flawlessly. The process was challenging, although exploring it was interesting. I’m not saying that I am perfect at it, but that I can use it without any hesitation.