Tuesday, 1 March 2011

Magazine Evaluation

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

A common and almost essential element within media products is the convention of representation which is fundamentally a method  of communication that relies on the signs and denotation ect to help the encoder express their desired views. Effective representation will then ensure that the decode can efficiently understand what the media is attempting to perceive.
My magazine itself focuses on the representation of the lower social classes and people who would often be considered by high society to be particularily rough, and this is shown wthin the colloquial slang of not only my magazines interviewer, but the subject of my interview inside my double page spread. This use of language is a good example of social stratification, where the speech aspects, such as slang, of an individual help to define which social class you will be confided within.  I have also intended for my magazine to represent the younger male sector of society  and I have denoted this with not only the use of the aforementioned language but also with the humour I have written into the substance of the magazine. Despite the basic stereotype of the younger male generation that I have used within my magazine, it is not the entirely correct representation of this social class as no representation can be entirely true, but by conveying to the stereotype I have then accepted the common views on this class, in order to help make my representation more believable. In order to ensure that I maintained to this stereotype  I created an imaginary entity which contained the basic elements of this stereotype.

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


to distribute my magazine I have chosen the media institution “IPC” as not only does it produce the magazine “Nuts” which I belive to pursue similar aims to mine with regards to their target audience being based within young males, and nuts also has a comedic substance within it,  but “IPC” also targets 46% of the male market, which is the majority share for a magazine company, so I therefore believe that in order to get the most possible attention from my target audience, using this already well established institution will enable me to efficiently reach out to my target audience.

When it comes to the income of a magazine the initial price of the issue should not be the only source of this income, and in fact the majority of a magazines profit comes from the advertising fees they charge in order for a company to have their advertisments shown within the magazine. The magazine is then able to charge high prices for this, as the advertising company wishes to do the upmost to get their product known to the public with the hope of the product being sold as a result of this.
Despite magazines already existing for young men these are generally based around sport, so therefore with my music magazine I believe im entering a relatively unscathed sector of the market which should hopefully mean I can maximise interest and sales from my magazine, and by adding extra genres such as comedy and the essence of attractive females, I believe that there should be a relatively high margin for success, as a result f the lack of competition.


   What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
During the process of creating my media magazine I have come into contact with a variation of technology and technology based services. The initial form of any technology that was required was infact the actual pc desktop that which contains all the programs and services that I required to actually create this product. After the actual computer machine It was necessary to use a camera to capture the images that I used within my magazine, and once these were uploaded on to the computer, I found I had to use the image enhancing program called “Adobe Photoshop”  which was essential to get the effect I created for my front page image. Although this program was useful it was also extremely confusing and there are a few technical issues that could have been avoided had I used a different program.  When creating this magazine I also came into contact with the Microsoft core package, in the form of Microsoft word, which  when being used to type word documents it excels and ensures the whole process is quick and efficient. Finally when it comes down to creating the layout and design of the magazine itself , I used the program “corel draw” which is solely based around the creation of magazines and despite the good points it has in terms of the layout, I do believe it to be quite flawed, as it is not only confusing to use, but it often crashes and begins to run slow, and also tends to do its own thing, making the creation of the magazine a hard and time consuming process.


 
Overall I believe that my knowledge of these technologies has not seen any great advancement, as I could already use it all efficiently other than corel draw, but as I don’t intend on using this program again if I have a different option solely because of the lack of reliability ive had.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?



 
When I look back on my initial preliminary task the advancement made to the final production of final product is easily identifiable, as not only can the improvements in the design and layout improved, but such aspects like the image editing and the basic conventions of any media product. This includes the inclusion of in depth connotation as a result of the signs I have included throughout the magazine. I believe I have also used a great deal of professionalism in the final product which was not present within this preliminary task and this is shown in the way I have kept to my target audience thanks to the manufacturing of an imaginary entity, and this then enabled me to hold a clear image in my head of whom I was creating this magazine for, so I could therefore focus on appealing it to them, where as in my preliminary task it wwas just aimed at a large group in general with no discrete target audience, and thus the content of the magazine itself would have been vague. I have also ensured that since the initial task, I have taken on a more effective role as an encoder so that I can easily convey my messages and beliefs about what im writing within the actual substance of the magazine.

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