Skills Development Essay

As part of AS Media and the Foundation Portfolio for the course, I had to create a music magazine front cover, content page and double page spread with an article.  As part of the preliminary task to this, I had to create a college magazine with content page. The preliminary task consisted of using DTP and a photo manipulation programme to construct my magazines. I also used the basic conventions of college magazines, which was easily done by researching other college magazines. Additionally, I used the LIIAR analogy to determine certain specific details of these magazines used in research, which gave me guidance for the final product. Research progressed into the main task of the year, analysing popular music magazines relevant to the selected mutual genre of which I would be creating a magazine for. Demographics & Physcographics were also considered in research for my magazine. After establishing a basis of a target audience with this information, I could also consider the hypothetical price for the magazine, using information gained from the consideration of Socio-Economic Groups. After this basic information has being established, I began to create drafts of my music magazine, using Adobe photo manipulation software throughout the Foundation Portfolio. 

Digital technology consideration was obviously a significant factor of the Foundation Portfolio. The programme, which I used for photographic manipulation, was Adobe Photoshop. Coming into the Foundation Portfolio course, I had a basic understanding of Photoshop which had developed from the Creative & Media Diploma of which I was enrolled onto at school. A module from this Media Diploma comprised of creating an anti-drug advert and had to use Photoshop to create this advert. My Photoshop knowledge developed as I started the Foundation Portfolio, having an understanding of the layering in Photoshop, as well as a more advanced idea of how to utilise blurring and using Gaussian blur to create a glowing effect of skin. Other tools used in Photoshop include the lasso tool which enabled me to outline certain aspects of a photo, also the airbrush tool, which ridded the photo of certain imperfections. The most impressive part of my Photoshop abilities was combining the shape of a ‘D’ with a photo of a tartan pattern which I had changed to a very specific colour blue, to which I had to remember the colour code of this (#00baff).

Establishing creative ideas is an ideal prospect of the music magazine part of the course, as there are no real barriers to what is included, only typical music magazine conventions and genre rules to abide by. This also obviously applied to the college magazine in that creative ideas were needed, however the criteria for the college magazine possibilities was significantly more restricted to those constructs of a specific conventional ideal. For example, the music magazine could cover a variety of genres, including any means of photographs of models etc., yet the college magazine had to specifically be about college, thus unable to broaden creative innovation. The ideas I had for the music magazine varied and changed as I drafted different ideas, yet always had it set that the fictional front man, ‘Dane’ would have a rebellious, non-conformist composition. As ideas developed and drafts changed I established what would/would not work in context of the magazine, where visuals were vital and eventually settled upon using a plaid pattern to represent the ‘punk’ cult, of which complied to my initial idea of non-conformity and rebellion.

Research was vital to establish certain technical conventions of the magazine, as well as to comprehend the audience of my magazines.  Researching college magazines was an easy process, looking at previous college magazines and analysing them using the LIIAR analysis process (Language, Institution, Ideology, Audience and Representation) and what these certain aspects related to in terms of the magazine. However, researching the music magazines was a much more complex process, where a much more advanced and professional media institution has created these texts and had to deconstruct these professional texts, yet I still analysed using LIIAR technique. I also had to find the specific ‘media packs’ information for an accurate quantitative view at audience detail. For one of my music magazines (The Stool Pigeon), I had to email the editor to ask for certain details, proving the much more elaborate process. The researching process linked well with the planning process of the music magazine. Using this information, I had an accurate pre-product consideration of audience using demographic/psychographic framework, with other details attached, such as consideration of the Socio-Economic Group of my audience. Reasons for this were due to cementing a price and rate of publishing the magazine which were relevant to socio-economic details.

After completing my music magazines cover, content page and double page spread/article, I had to pitch it and get audience feedback. The practicality of this would enable me to understand the flaws and strong points of my magazine. The way in which I held this process was to print out pictures of the magazine and ask peers to complete a mini survey of which I had created specifically for the evaluation of the magazine.

The questions asked were as followed:

• Would you purchase this magazine if it was published? (yes/no)
• Can you tell the genre of music that the magazine includes by looking at the front cover? (yes/no)
• Is the magazine reasonably priced? (yes/no)
• Could you give a suggestion for amendment?

The majority of the yes/no questions asked provided positive feedback. Yet, it was the audience’s suggestion for amendment that may focus was with, how could I improve my magazine to fulfil audience’s enjoyment?  The main concerns of amending the magazine were to do with ‘genre’ as the genre of my magazine was ‘indie’ music, to introduce the lesser known music to others. However, the audience did give suggestions that did relate to the visuals of the magazine, such as ‘too much blue’ and ‘unable to see masthead’. I learnt that the process of audience feedback is vital in any cases as it can provide strong suggestions for re-drafting opportunities and improvements.

As the brief explained, we must stick closely to the conventions of an already established media text. My college magazine compared well to the other college magazines of which I had done my research on, with the target audience obviously the same and functioning in a similar way of which was to share recent college related news to others this was quite predictable that my college magazine would be conventionally similar to other college magazines. On the other hand, the music magazine involved a significantly wider variation of conventions as the criteria is non-specific due to the large possibilities. I used one of the issues of NME that I did my research on to compare the conventions of my magazine against a real media product. Doing so, I realised that I had closely followed the conventions of the cover. Some of the aspects that I did leave out (secondary cover line, skyline feature and sell line) may have been included in the original drafting process of the magazine, yet later taken out of the final product to avoid ruining the structure of the final product. These aspects were small, little aspects thus considered last when constructing a final product, and as a decision I decided to leave them. Next, comparing the content page and it is obvious to see the major difference. The real media product has a significant amount more visual aspects such as photographs, whereas the content page for my music magazine only has one, the main image for the article. The reason why I only have one image, rather than the conventional numerous images was due to emphasising the importance of the double page spread article which was seen on this page. Despite this, it is possible to see how my content page is structured similarly to that of a real media product. Finally, I compare/contrast the similarities and differences between my music magazine and a real music magazine so that I can allocate conventional similarities and differences. This is probably the most closely comparable to the real media product in terms of conventions, yet there are some missing aspects in my music magazine such as a byline. The reason in which I did not use a byline is that I used a photographer credit, thus thought it unnecessary to mention my own name a second time.

Overall, I have shown a good understanding of real media products relevant to the task and shown how I transferred them into my own personal work. I was personally impressed on the consistency of the house style which I used throughout my own magazine, one of the main conventions of a music magazine. The colour scheme of blue, white and black was a choice which represented a ‘cool’ character, such as the ego of Dane – the fictional musician in my music magazine.