Welcome to my blog:

Welcome to my blog, where my Media studies coursework has been completed. Throughout this work, I have been asked to produce a magazine based on music. My product development progressed through 3 stages.
1. Research and planning. Where I analysed other music magazines, and a suitable target audience.
2. Product making. Where I used Photoshop software in order to produce my cover, contents and DPS.
3. Evaluation. I answered a set of questions using various technologies.
Just to state, the order blog posts should be viewed are indentified via a [[number]] tag at the end of each label. The (1) is different as it shows how many posts have that label title. Just to distinguish...
I had a lot of fun creating the porduct and progressing through my media coursework.
Have fun looking through my work...

Final product:

During an extension period, we were allowed to make small but important adjustments to our final products. Here were the slightly changed products of mine:

These were images made during the last few days of our magazine designing. These images were used for the final evaluation questions, as they were orginally going to feature the first version of the final product. However, the evaluation formatted questions have been changed and are now directly related towards the progression of producing these edited products instead. (Proof = Questions 1, 5 and 7 all display images of this product.)

Evaluation: Question 7: (Final)

Extension notes for Q 7:

- E.g of improving understanding is how the colours were used to conform to media magazine conventions. The colour palette used for Key Point, for instance, featured black, white, yellow and red. A common used schematic for a rock genre magazine. Understanding of how colours have affect on a magazine's representation is an example of how my porgression through creating the magazine product has helped me to gain a superior standard of knowing media. 

- Another example is the layout. The layout had to be made more neat and aligned correctly. The alignment of all content within the final product by far exceeds the standards of the draft, something which many times was shown to be a criticism full piece of work.

- A third example of how my progression of understanding of capabilities is the general representation of a media product. For instance, what content is featured, what bands are mentioned, the target audience and appealing factors, etc.. What is likely to gain more sales!

- Also, the terminology usage. How close are images, is it a mid-shot or a wide angle shot? What is the image on the cover featuring and how does it help to protray the product? (E.g. my magazine had a band in causal clothing used to represent the genre of rock.)

Evaluation: Question 6: (Final)

Evaluation: Question 5: (Final)

Evaluation on question 5. How did I attract my audience? on Prezi

Evaluation: Question 4: (Final)

Evaluation: Question 3: (Final)

Media Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation: Question 2: (Final)

Above is an image regarding a stereotypical view of a rock music fan. Badly dressed, wild, considerably poor, low in education, and generally low class in both appearance and character content.

This is a chart extracted from a source regarding different socio-economic groups. Typically, when referring to a rock genre magazine, we are thinking lower class, such as C2 or D. This is due to the stereotypical image of a rock star or rock fan. Low class. This means that a rock magazine, in this case, Key Point, should appeal to a lower socio-economic group due to it being a product which appeals to the characteristics of these individuals within the low groups. A reason Key Poitn might recieve good sales for appealing to 'low class' rock fans is because of how groups such as C2 are shown to be fairly high on the green bar, representing how most of the regular, more poor and less educated members of society belong to these lower groups. This is why Key Point aims at these people, and this is how the product is able to represent these certain types of social groups.

Evaluation: Question 1: (Final)

Media Studies Evaluation 1

Draft 2.0 product:

Note: This was originally going to be my final product, but changes were made to later to produce a final product.

Note: Since the product only shows 3 memebrs of The HIT now, the idea will be slightly altered. Mr Messai, played by me in the draft, will now be scrapped as an idea. The new band member names will be 'Power punch' for the member in the blue jacket, 'super stew' for the one in a black and white tracksuit, and 'Cool Cad' for the member on the far right of the Double page spread... (DPS)

08/03/12: Improvements:

Final day of practical coursework. This is where the following final changes were made to the product:
- The contents page was transformed a lot so that it would fit to the overall product, and would look a lot more interesting and appealing, with the recolour, and layout of boxes and text.
- The cover main image was resized and fitted more accurately, so that one of the member's faces was not covered up by the 'Key Point' title.
- The member on the left side of the cover had a broken guitar (symbolising the band going 'split' story) to indiate that this magazine still generally followed its original intentions that it is a rock magazine, focusing on bands such as 'The HIT' and primarily on guitars and keyboards.
- Key boards were not visually displayed in these example pages but the contents page listing and the title of the product still were desinged to indicate that they were a general focal point of the magazine.
- The final product then, once finished, was printed off, the uploaded later, all before the deadline... The DPS was printed off in A3 to be of appropriate size...

06/03/12: Improvements:

Today the whole product was adjusted to improve my mark from a 2a to a likely level 4. This was where the cover page recieved its new cover, this time with a wall Bg featuring Martyn, Josh and Alex S. The main cover image was toyed with, such as colour correction being automated, the brightness turned up and the contrast reduced.
The DPS was also adjusted entirely. For instance, the images of band members with glasses were removed and so was the green square. Now it had a Bg of the band members sitting on a spiral staircase from the school site. The image had a white Bg above it but the opacity was reduced severely so the image could still be seen, though shined with white covering.
The layout for the DPS content was also changed. The text was now layered out into columns of text and the questions were changed colour to be distinguished visually from the answers. The text, both interview and summary of article, were placed in front of black but only slightly opaque boxes of colour, this is so it would stand out against the the brightened Bg and everything else...

05/03/12: Improvements:

Today a few minor adjustments were made, including further correction of colours for each image used, and the text size and fonts were also changed so they would conform more to the standards of a media magazine. The title was made less desktop-like, and the new images for the final product were taken, here is what they were:
Final images taken, excluding some that were already used in the draft design of the product:

As it would have it, only two or three of these were actually used, the one with the 3 together , for the replacement of the cover main image, and the spiral staircase picture, used for the DPS of the product.

01/03/12. Improvements:

In today's lesson, I have made some major changes to my product work.
- For a start, I have completely rearranged the DPS by layout. Instead of the middle image going across the two pages and the page split, the images of band members have now been placed in the corner, on the side of and below all main text. Also, the article itself is not arranged more correctly, with a lost of columns which make the layout seem more professional, and contribute more to the following of media layout conventions.
- Also, another major change to my work was the colour arrangement of the cover page. Instead of having a black silhouette and a white background, the colours have been reversed. While this modification was simple to execute, the result is an entirely different representation of content. The dominant surrounding colour is now black, which makes the cover look darker and more interesting in comparison. The text that was put on the side of the page has now been reversed in colour too so it can be seen properly while over the background or silhouette. (Red to yellow, yellow to red.)
- The main image was also enlarged so it was a more dominant feature on the page and looked more like an actual mid-shot. Media conventions of front covers usually associate with the main image of a mid-shot being the main focus of the magazine.
- The DPS also had a new background, instead of white with a grey corner, the entire page now has a black to white gradient from corner to corner. This makes the entire page stand out more as more interesting. Though part of the page was darkened to add visual interest, the laying out of the graident background was cleverly executed in order for the gradience not to make the text of the article, or other content, appear less noticeable. The text is not blended in with the gradient black BG too much.