My media product, a magazine front cover, uses several different forms of real media products which I had researched from published magazines to help me to understand and use them in my own media product. I used items such as a bleed, as the picture on my front cover was printed to the edge of the page, a callout promoting offers that can be found within the magazine, a running banner along the bottom of the page promoting a competition in the magazine and a running head, giving the reader an idea of what to find inside the magazine, all of which I found on magazines in my research.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for my magazine will be achievers, aspirers, post-modernists and will be between B and C2 on the Jicnars scale. Our audience will also be both male and female, aged between 16 and 19.
How did you attract/address your audience?
For my front cover, I used a picture bleed of a male student in a medium close-up, smiling and looking into the camera with both thumbs up in the sunshine. The sun connotes happiness and warmth and the 'thumbs up' and smile connote success and confidence by looking directly into the camera. The colour scheme used in my magazine is red, blue and white, which connotes patrionism and unisex material.
This attracts my audience of students who are achievers and aspirers as anchored with 'live work play study' connotes fun and freedom, whilst still being able to study and succeed.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
To be able to complete this project, I had to learn to use new technologies such as taking pictures with a digital camera and using programs such as photoshop and in design. Using the digital camera, I learnt how to change the mode, turn the flash on and off and control the shutter. Being able to use the digital camera helped my product as it gave a clear, high-quality photograph which was effective on the front cover of my magazine, it also helped being able to view the pictures I had just taken on the camera screen, to see if the shot was right. If we could not of used a digital camera, the process of making my magazine would of been much harder as it would of been difficult to transfer the photos from the camera onto the computer.
I also used the program photoshop to edit my frontcover, changing layers, text fonts, colours and sizes and creating the callout. This was useful for moving the mast head behind the picture boost etc.
To create the layout of my contents page, I used the program in design to create a grid of three collumns, helping to keep it even and keep the images and text alligned.
