Candidate Information

Candidate Name:

Sarah Biswell

Candidate Number:

 5016

Centre Name:

Wilmington Grammar School for Girls

Centre Number:

61119

Final Products

Evaluation Question 7

Look back at your preliminary task. What have you learnt in the progression from it to the full product?


From the preliminary task to the music magazine, I have learnt a lot of new skills and improved at those I already knew.

Time management

When making my preliminary magazine, I found that towards the end of the deadline I rushed to complete it as I had not put enough work into the product in the first few weeks. I took that into consideration when making my music magazine and managed my time much more efficiently. I found that it was most time efficient to develop my product and then blog about what I had done rather than leave the blogging all to the end; this also kept me organised and meant I knew what I was working on each lesson.

Developing skills

Throughout the course I have learnt many new skills. This includes my researching skills as I believe research for my music magazine was much more thorough than it had been for my school magazine. I benefitted from this as I constantly knew how I wanted my magazine to look from ideas from my research. Furthermore, on my first magazine I researched magazines but did not compare them very well to find similarities and traits that were constantly used. On my music magazine I compared my research to discover common fonts and layout styles which helped me develop my magazine. I have also found out a lot more about magazine designs and the different styles (e.g. rocky/ pop) which I used to create the right image for my own magazine.

I have also learnt about new computer software. When making my preliminary task, I was introduced to blogger, photoshop and indesign. As these programmes were very new to me, I found them quite hard to use and remember all the different features, however, when I began my music magazine I was much more confident in using them and have learnt different features, which I believe is reflected in my work. Using blogger I have learnt how to make labels and add animations, amongst other things while in photoshop I have learnt how to make a magazine and add text etc. rather than making it on indesign. Out of all of the new computer progammes, I believe I have learnt the most about photoshop. One of the tools I have found the most useful and used throughout is the lasso tool as this allows you to change/remove different parts of the image, without the rest of it being affected. I have therefore used it to change lighting in parts of an image, remove backgrounds and change eye colour.

Throughout the course of making my magazines, I took various photographs which I used a canon eos 7D camera for. I was knew to this camera which has lots of features and so found it very confusing but by the time I did photoshoots for my music magazines I was much more familiar with it and so took better pictures where I focused on the lighting/shadowing and angles of the image. This made the final outcomes more professional. Furthermore, I planned various outfits, rather than using just one as I did on my preliminary task which was successful as after looking back I decided some of the outfits did not suit the model, while others looked much more appropriate.

Evaluation Question 6

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

Evaluation Question 5

How does it attract/ engage your audience?

The target audience for my magazine is 15-25 year old females and so I have included various features throughout the magazine to attract and engage this audience.

Title Page

Throughout the magazine, I have contiunued with the same colour scheme as this is attractive to the target market and makes the magazine consistent.

Contents Page

Double Page Spread

(click on the images to enlarge)

Evaluation Question 4

Who will be the audience of your media product?

            

Evaluation Question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product & why?

From this research I have discovered that Bauer Media is a large, well-known company that operates in magazine and radio, which makes it appropriate for publishing my magazine. If a large company like this publishes it, it suggests people will give it the benefit of the doubt and purchase it because they know a large company has invested in it and therefore believes it is as good as their current magazines (kerrang and Q). Decode magazine will also be on the same level as these magazines because they have the same publisher and so will have a high reputation. Furthermore, Bauer media has over 80 different media brands so if Decode magazine is unsucessful, the business will not suffer from a loss as it has other brands it can fall back on if necessary.

IPC media is one of the UK's leading consumer magazine publishers which makes it appropriate because it operates within the country which is where Decode magazine will be primarily sold. As with Bauer media, IPC has many brands and so should not be at a disadvantage if Decode magazine was unsuccessful. In addition, the publisher owns NME music magazine and so is already associated with music magazines. From research I discovered that IPC's target audience includes two thirds of UK women which is appropriate as the target for my magazine is 15-25 year old females. However, this publisher may be inappropriate as it mainly publishes hobby and lifestyle magazines and therefore Decode would be associated with this.

Conde Nast is also a large publishing company and so will benefit Decode magazine as the business is doing well financially and has a good reputation which will encourage potential customers to buy the new magazines they publish. However, Conde Nast predominantly publishes lifestyle and fashion magazines and so it is unclear if a music magazine would be successful if published by this company. Furthermore, Conde Nast is a worldwide business while the target market for my magazine is in the UK which suggests this is not the ideal business as it will not sell if introduced to other countries as they are not the correct target market. As Conde Nast is a worldwide business it would probably not be interesting in a product that is aimed at quite a small market.

Overall, I believe the best suited company to publish Decode magazine would be Bauer Media because it has the most experience in music magazines and is based in the UK so will be interested in magazine with a UK target market. Furthermore, Bauer Media is a large company and has a high reputation which will encourage people to buy their products; Decode magazine will have high expectations as it will automatically be associated with Q and Kerrang magazines.