4)      Who would be the audience for my media product?

ECHO’s audience is largely going to be youngsters, mostly teenagers and no one above 30 years, those both females and males, of working or middle class and most likely those who live in cities. This is my most likely audience because the people who fit into this group are the most urban group Young people will be the main age group buying ECHO because it is aimed at this age group, the artists in the magazine are this age, the language used in the magazine will be familiar to society’s youth and the music in the magazine will mostly be listened to by these young people. Both females and males will read ECHO, there will be no gender- specific artists and artwork and images will be tailored to both attract the eye of both females and males. The magazine focuses on RnB and Hip-Hop music which is a very gender neutral genre and so neither males nor females should feel excluded due to the article content. I will represent both male and female artists in my magazine by including features and interviews on an equal amount of artist from each gender; this will ensure that ECHO appeals to both males and females alike. A magazine which has a female cover artist as well as cover-lines only detailing of the female artists features will automatically eliminate a large portion of the male audience so I have made sure to include a range of artists from both genders who make music which is not always aimed at one sex in particular. Those from working class backgrounds will read ‘ECHO’, although the magazine is not exclusively targeted at them it is most likely that the people interested in the content of ECHO will not be from an upper class background. Lastly, my audience is likely to be people living in the city, because the magazine is urbanized to appeal to these people, also it is unlikely that a large audience will be found in the country-side and rural parts of the UK. The media product is targeted at urban youngsters who are mostly still in education, or at a similar age to those in education, these are the people who are the ones who will be most interested in the events in the lives of artists such as Drake, Rihanna, Plan B and Chris Brown. The people who will be buying magazine most typically shop like; HMV, JD, H&M, New Look and Topshop/TopMan which are all high street stores, this is because my audience will mostly be young people who can’t afford to shop at designer outlets and these are some of the most popular stores for both boys and girls on the high street. These people are likely to go to the cinema, shop, do sports or listen to music in their spare time as these are the activities available to young urban people, also the advertisements in my magazine being for shops, music and television show that these are the activities that interest my audience. The audience for ECHO differs from the audience of magazines such as VIBE and XXL, these magazines have been designed to appeal to Americans by using their language and news stories that they will be familiar with which will be very different to that of a British audience. An American audience will be more likely to shop in designer outlets and buy different brands of clothing that are popular in America, also the richer groups in American society are more likely to buy these magazine compared to the richer people in British society because there is a wider spread of young rich people in America.

5)      How did you attract/ address your audience?

After creating my audience research questionnaire and receiving my responses I gained the information allowing me to give my target audience what they want. I realised that the most popular artists were NIcki Minaj, Drake and Beyonce and so I based the issue around RnB/ pop/ Hip-Hop music. Contrary to this, I used Rihanna as my cover artist despite her not coming up as one of the most popular artists on my questionnaire results, this is because I had a vision of how I wanted my magazine  to look, being heavily based around her greatly successful single ‘Rudeboy’. Having this issue of the magazine being based around Rihanna’s song will attract my target audience as ‘Rudeboy’ was a huge chart success and remained in the UK and US charts for a long time and an even longer time in the urban charts. As this magazine would have been released at the height of this song’s dominance of the charts there would have been a huge following of people wanting to know every detail about Rihanna and her song meaning that the issue will have had a unique selling point, adding to the readership. The advertisements within my magazine are also a reminder to the readers that this magazine is targeted at them, advertisements for things such as Blackberry’s, Adidas clothing, and iPods which are very popular amongst the younger generation. These advertisements not only appeal to my young target audience but also mean that whilst they are reading they are tuned into their youthful/urban mindset. Also, as voted the most important feature, ‘new releases’ feature heavily in ECHO whether it be through the latest news, recent award winners, latest charts or articles on what to expect in the coming months, readers and constantly being updated on the here and now. To address my audience of young people, I made sure to use mostly non-formal language with a  few uses of slang language and ‘in the know’ references that the audience will be familiar with such as references to Beyoncé’s ‘alter ego’ and Rihanna’s break up with Chris Brown. My magazine is accompanied by a website; this is very important in addressing my audience seeing as most people nowadays are computer-literate and may be inclined to check the website for updated rather than waiting for the next issue to find out what’s been going on.

6)      What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing my product?

Whilst creating ECHO I used several technologies, some of which I was experienced in using, making it very easy to develop my work and some of which were new to me and challenging as I learnt to use them. I used both Publisher and Word to create my pages, these are both programmes that I was used to working with and so I was able to apply my knowledge and get the most out of them. In Word I was able to create my two page spread article with Rihanna and copy and paste it into my Publisher document in which I was developing the two page spread. In Publisher, I created text boxes in three columns to paste my article into and I inserted the images for the page, created quote text boxes and a title for the article. In addition, I was new to using Photoshop Elements for photo editing, as well as an online photo editor, ‘Picnik’. I developed the skills in Photoshop to remove backgrounds from images using the ‘magic wand’ tool, to use the airbrush tool so that skin looks clearer, and to adjust the brightness of the images using the contrast and lighting tool. These tools made my images look more professional and made the magazine look better organised as images on the same page didn’t have contrasting backgrounds. Using Photoshop allowed me to layer my images and also made it easy for me to cut out the backgrounds of my pictures. In the majority of my images there was a busy background unsuitable for the magazine and so I had to put each of my images into Photoshop and change the background so that it was pure white, or the colour of the page. The website ‘Picnik’ was very helpful in editing my images for things like contrast, brightness and sharpness which was necessary so that the images looked high quality on the pages. I also developed the skills to operate blogger.com, prior to my magazine production I had not used any websites on which you create a blog and I had to learn to save Publisher documents and JPEG documents in order to be able to upload my posts onto the blog.

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

From creating a contents and front page for my school magazine I have learnt the importance of quality of images to give the correct representation within the magazine.  If the images on a page are taken from clashing angles they will make the page look too busy and ruin the focus of the page, also clarity and style will be lost because through the images we can see how much effort has been taken. I have also learnt the value of audience research, without having carried out my questionnaire for my music magazine I wouldn’t have been able to make sure I included appropriate content that was tailored to interest my target audience. In comparison to the Preliminary task’s questionnaire my questions didn’t have to be so structured where I had to break down the answer into different sections for parents, sixth formers and year 7-11 students. When I was creating my school magazine I did not take enough time out to gather my images and get a wide range of original images and so I had to use image which had not been taken with as much time put in to them. From this I learnt to spend a lot of time deliberating over which images to use and placing large emphasis on the quality inside the image; regarding dress sense, make-up, stylising and poses. For my music magazine, having learnt from this, I took a whole day out to have a photoshoot where I took over 200 images of my models in different outfits and different make up. Also, with my school magazine it was difficult to come up with lots of content to go inside the magazine without having created a flat plan, mapping out where all my pages would go. When it came to creating my music magazine I had a detailed flat plan that helped me create my contents page. After creating two drafts of my front page for the school magazine, I learnt that it is important to continue redrafting your work and to document the changes your work goes through. I have also learnt that it is important to use a house style that you will use for your magazine so that it is easy to put your work onto the page and make it appropriately stylised for the audience. Creating the school magazine in the preliminary task prepared me for being time – conscious when it comes to preparation, taking too long on drafting my page instead of putting time into actually making the page was a waste of time also, I learnt that it is best o take images early on in the process and to put a lot of effort into taking the images. By knowing which images you are going to use this makes the process of putting together a page much easier as you can design the page around whatever images are on there first.

Deconstruction of my music magazine front cover

Deconstruction of my contents page

images before and after editing

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