Foundation Portfolio - Main Task

The foundation portfolio main task involves producing a front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine. All the images and text used must be original, produced by me and have a minimum of four images.

As the beginning of this task I looked at how the media key concepts could be apply, I have done this by looking at the acronym LIIAR.

Language

The language which I will be using through out the magazine will be informal, fun and entertaining. The style of writing is going to match the genre of the magazine and set a theme running through out it, such as the title of the music magazine Kerrang which is a onomatopoeic and derives from the noise made when smashing an electric guitar. The colour of the font has to relate with the genre as the magazine will then look more effective.

Institution

There are a number of different music magazine publishers. Below is some publishers which I have researched to find out which music magazine publisher hasn't already produced a magazine with the same genre which I will be producing.

Bauer: The Bauer publishing group was founded in Hamburg 1875 by Johann Bauer. The publishing group has 238 magazines world wide in 15 countries as well as TV and radio stations. Bauer is the largest consumer magazine publishing company in the UK.

Bauer publishes three music magazines these are: Kerrang, Mojo and Q.

Kerrang! remains the market-leading music weekly with a devoted audience of rock fans driving sales of 60,289.

MOJO’s sales are up on the period to 106, 367 and is second only to stablemate Q in the sector. Combined Q and MOJO deliver almost half (43%) the share of the monthly music market. MOJO – which brings classic music to a new generation and new music to established fans – consistently delivers a bespoke fix of high quality journalism and iconic photography to music fans alongside.

Q retains its pre-eminent position as the number one music monthly brand in the UK and across Europe of 112,532.

Future plc: Future is an international special-interest media business, founded in 1985. Future produces about 100 magazines, over 70 websites and magazine exported to 90 different countries. Future sells more than 4 million magazines each month, they attract more than 18 million unique monthly visitors to our websites. They are also the number one for selling guitar magazines selling over 550,000 a month.

Future publishes twelve music magazines, these are: Classic Rock, Computer Music, Future Music, Guitarist, Guitarist Australia, Guitar Techniques, Guitar World, Guitar World Legends, Metal Hammer, Rhythm, Revolver and Total Guitar.

Ipc: IPC Media is a leading UK consumer magazine publisher. Almost two in every three UK women and over 45% of UK men read an IPC magazine. That's almost 27 million UK adults and produces 80 magazines.

Ipc produces three music magazines, these are: Guitar and Bass, NME and Uncut.

Guitar and Bass: Essential reading for the serious guitarist, with dozens of guitar tests, playing techniques, an exclusive bass section and in-depth features on guitar heroes past, present and future.

NME: The NME is the longest published and most respected music weekly in the world. Every week it gives its readers the most exciting, most authoritative coverage of the very best in contemporary music. The award-winning www.nme.com, launched in 1996, has grown to be the biggest commercial music news site in Europe.

Uncut: Uncut is the UK’s most authoritative music and movie magazine. Uncut celebrates all that is great in rock and film, both new and old, cult and classic.

Ideology

The aim for the music magazine will be to inform and entertain the targeted audience which I will chose. In my magazine I will be including the latest news on both new and recent and old bands/artists, upcoming shows and interviews.

Audience

The main target audience for the magazine is going to be aged between 18-24 years, both male and female.

Representation

As the main target audience is aimed between 18-24 years and both male and female, the magazine needs to represent this age group by making the language fun and entertaining but at the same time serious.

Foundation Portfolio Evaluation

Foundation Portfolio evaluation

· In what ways does your Media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?

The different forms and conventions used in my magazine front page and contents page are similar to those used in real media products. On the front cover I used the following conventions which appear on many magazine front covers; title of the magazine, date and issue of magazine, bar code, main photograph (of a student) and text to support the stories which will appear inside.

On the contents page I used: title, stories and what page they will appear on, photographs supporting inside stories and.....

· How does your Media product represent
particular social groups?

My Media product represents anyone who is interested in photography and would enjoy learning more about the subject and the technologies.

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

The type of media institution which might distribute my media product would be some one who has distributed college magazines before, such as the media institution of the secondary teachers and primary teachers. My magazine is similar to these two products as it is free for every one who is interested.

· Who would be the audience for your Media
product?

The main audience for my media product is for people who are thinking on choosing one of the courses, and people who have just started the course that would like to more information about how certain things work, such as photoshop.

People who are also already on the course are likely to get a copy because there is information which could be useful to them, such as what you could the with your A level result after college.

· How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted/addressed my audience by chosing bright, bold colours for the text and having a photographic background.

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

From the process of constructing this product I learnt how to use a professional camera and how different lighting, angles and the setting can affect the appearance of the final image. I also learnt a lot of skills on photoshop, these where things like how to use the crone tool. I now feel confident in using this piece of software again.

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

Looking back at the peliminary task I feel that I have learnt a lot from the progression from it to the full product.

Final front page and contents page

Analysis of front cover

I will be using photoshop to create my front page magazine. I am going to explain below each step I take whilst creating the front page cover, this will also include a number of images to support my explanations.

I chose to take a photograph of this person because she is currently studying A level photography. Before I took the photograph I set up the studio and pulled down a white roll of paper to create the white background. I chose to have a white background instead of any other colour because she is wearing a black top and grey jeans this creates good contrasts. I used studio lighting which kept shadows on her face to a minimum.


The picture to the right is what I created first for my front cover of a college magazine. The reason why I decided not to use it, is because there is to much going on and it is all cramped in, even though I hadn't finished it. This can look confusing to the consumer, and may be difficult to understand the message which it is trying to put across.

I decided to use this photograph as my background of the front page because.....
Before I put anything onto it I decided to crop it down, this was so there wasn't to much going on in the photograph which distracted the audience from the main view of
the magazine.

The image to the right shows how much of the background image cropped, it also shows that I blurred out the background image slightly so that it wasn't the main focus of the front page. I did this by selecting filter then went onto blur which then gave me a selection of different types of blur which can be created, I chose the Gaussian blur and changed the radius to 2.0 pixels. I thought that this would be a good amount to blur the background image because it was the right amount to not distract the targeted audience from the rest of the cover.

The next thing I did was cut out the photograph of the student I chose by selecting the polygonal tool which I carefully selected the outside of the student copied then pasted it onto the background image. I then put it in a few different places to find the place which looked the most effective.

With the name of my magazine I decided to cut out letters from the newspaper as it is a more creative way of doing the name, which works well with the photography magazine. After I had cut these out I took photographs of them put them into photoshop and cut them out using the polygonal tool, copied them and pasted them on to the background.

The image to the left shows the next steps I took to completing my front cover page.

First of all I decided to go around each letter of the name of my magazine in two different colours, these are pink/purple for the letters on the white background and yellow for the letters on the black/grey background. I did this so that the name stood out slightly more from the background then what it did before. I did this by selecting the brush tool then changed the colour by selecting the colour picker. I also changed the opacity slightly so the colours weren't to bright and stood out to much.

The next thing I did was use the horizontal type tool under the name of the magazine to give the audience an idea of what the magazine is about, I used a dark blue colour because it works well with the background colour. I also wrote a bit about one of the stories on the cover to show what was in the magazine. I did this in red so it stands out from the background of the front page.

To the right is my final product.

Front cover draft

Textual Analysis of Magazines

I am going to do a textual analysis of a secondary teachers magazine and three different genres of magazines with an adiance between the ages 16 to 19. I am going to include information about the language, institution, ideology, audiance and representation.

The audience of this magazine is for secocodary teachers who may need some advice or information about teaching.

The intention of this magazine is to give advise secondary teachers on certain subjects for example in this imparticular copy, it has an artical on whether boys and girls learn differently. It also has a section on dyslexia about how they are trying to boost the awerness and help they can give to studants. It also includes an interveiw with child psychologist Dr Tanya Byron.

This amgazine is part of the teacher net, which was developed by the Department for Children, Schools and Families as a resource to support the education pofession.

I scanned the front and the back page of this magazine so that it can be seen that there is a male on the front page and a female on the back page.






The genre of this magazine is a gaming one for the X BOX 360.

The headline on this magazine takes up quite a large section of the page, the reason for this will be so it stands out against other competing magazines.

The title is "X BOX WORLD 360" this has a white background with two words of the heading were lime green and one was black. they have used these two colours against the white background because it makes it more noticable. The two green words are the same colours because they are that is the name of the console which the magazine is about, that advertises different types of games and reviews of them.

At the side of the name, of the magazine there is a photograph of the x box console showing a game sticking out, this is on the same background as the title and is there to show what the console looks like to any one who is interested. the game which you can see in the game console relates to the front page story, the name of this magazine has also been edited on it.

The main image on the front cover will be the main person which is involved in the game, the gate keeper.

To the left hand side in the middle of the page it has the name of the game, the first bit of the name is in white and the second bit is in lime green. This is because this is the main name that all the games before this one are called ("The Elder Scrolls"), the IV is in white because it is showing you which version it is. The lime green part "Shivering Isles" is this colour because it is the name of the next chapter which this game is about that has been continued on.

Just abouve the heading the producer has put on a fact about the magazine ("UK'S BEST-SELLING UNOFFICIAL XBOX 360MAG!") , this is to attract people further into buying a copy. The background of this fact is black with the majority of the writing against the background is white except the green word "best-selling" which is lime green, it is this colour to make it stand out more so people will read it, this gives the magazine a better name. the words "x box 360" is done in bold because of the importance of what type of magazine it is.

Kerrang! is a rock magazine published by Bauer Consumer Media.

At the top of this magazine there is a puff which has some artists and bands on which suggests that they will be some kind of story or interview about them.

Under the puff there is the title of the magazine, this is white with a black background to make it stand out more to people. On the writing there is black lines going through it and black splodges dotted around, there is also white splodges off the writing onto the black background. This has been done to try and match the title with the type of magazine which it is. At the top and the bottom of the black background there is a thin white border, this is used to make it look more effective.

The main image on this page is of James which is the main singer of the band, who also plays guitar. Part of his head was covering the title of the magazine, they do this because the magazine is a popular one which most people know the name off so all of it isnt needed to be shown. The name of there band is across James', the style of there bands name is the logo which they always use to signify them, the type of writing they have used on the M and the A suggests that there band is going to be quite rocky and lively.

Published by Hearst Magazines, Cosmopolitan has 58 international editions, is printed in 34 languages and is distributed in more than 100 countries. Fashion

Foundation Portfolio-Preliminary Task

Producing a college magazine front page and contents page

As this is the beginning of the foundation portfolio preliminary task I looked at how the media key concepts could be applied to produce a college magazine. I used the acronym LIIAR:
L-anguage
I-nstitution
I-deology
A-udiance
R-epresentation

Language

The style of the front cover would have to appeal to college students by having a bright layout, have interesting pictures which support what the stories in the magazine are about. The text should have a casual approach to keep the readers interested in the full story or topic. The front cover will look fun to read in the way it is set out on the page.

Institution

I will be controlling the production of the front cover and contents page of this magazine which I will be doing.

Ideology

The text will respect every ones equalities and opportunities.

The front page and the mock up of the layout of the contents page is going to be set out so it will be clear and easy to understand to all readers so that there will be no confusion to what messages is trying to me put across.

Audience

The main audience of the college magazine will be aimed at college students aged 16-19 years old, the majority been female students (64%). 55% of the college students travel from the east riding compered with the 45% which come from Hull. 70% students who had finished there courses went on to University, with 40% going to Hull University. The magazine is going to give out information related to the college.

Representation

I will take a medium close-up photograph of a student to appear in the college magazine. Before taking the photograph I will have to decide where the student is going to be, what they will be wearing and whether any props are needed. These ideas have to be taken into account when taking the photograph because it has to relate to the topic or story that has been produced.