Looking Back at your Preliminary Task, What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I have learnt the important of house-style between my preliminary task and the finished product. A house-style helps to build a brand, with which customer loyalty is attached. If there's no way to distinguish a brand, then the customer loyalty had nowhere to be placed, and the magazine receives no benefit even if it's a good magazine. A logo is also vitally important in creating the magazine's brand for customer loyalty to be attached to, the audience need reference points to know almost without noticing that they are picking up the same brand of magazine time and time again.

Colour is also heavily important. In my preliminary task, the colours used were very limiting and similar. Helped with my audience research, my final product used a colour scheme which was more bold, and had more of an impact on the audience.

I have also learnt how important it is to follow industry standards when creating the magazine. The standards and conventions manage to create a route for the audiences eye, which in the case of my magazine when from focal image to masthead to content, to ease the flow of information to the audience, and creating small questions in their heads, making them want to find out more by reading on.

What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product?

Much of what I have learnt about technologies is regarding its use in the feedback process of a project. Using programs such as Skype to have an in-depth conversation allowed me to gain a full understanding of what my audience thought of my designs, and recording the conversation enabled me to have a reference to check back on when I was revising the designs to suit my target audience.

How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

Attracting the audience was achieved through the use of standard industry conventions, addressing the audience was achieved by tailoring content to suit my target audience.

Using standard conventions such as focal point imagery, and mastheads, the target audience are attracted to the magazine. First to the image, which helps to provoke questions, which encourages them to read the masthead to get a brief overview, but not enough to satisfy what the audience want to know completely. Leaving the audience wanting more after the image and masthead then convinces them to read through the content and text on the page, and this is where addressing the audience correctly becomes important.

Bearing my target audience in mind, I wanted to create text that was easy to absorb, in an attempt to not allow for any possible frustration when reading, which may cause a viewer to stop reading the article, or the whole magazine. Having simple, easy and interesting text allows a smooth flow through the text, which ultimately satisfies the user.

Who Would Be Your Audience For Your Media Product?

Discovered through my primary research. My typical audience would be between 16 and 21 years old, with a taste for indie music and a student. Although because the indie social group is so general, the audience is expanded.

My research has also told me that the typical audience for my magazine would be interested in live music events, possibly showing connotations with an adventurous or outgoing nature. My target audience would probably be more conformed to society than readers of some other magazines. Heavy Metal and Hip Hop cultures are trying to fight against the mainstream and achieve a breakdown in convention and conformity, whereas Indie is a much more accepted social group, which has become fully integrated into society and accepted, and in many cases endorsed as an alternative to seemingly anti-conformist genres such as Heavy Metal and Hip Hop.

What Kind of Media Institution might distribute your media product and why?

I think my product could be distributed in indie or mainstream music shops, such as HMV and Virgin on the high-street, as the magazine represents a seemingly agreeable culture, compared with a death metal based magazine, with a culture attached that some would find offensive.

Because of the non-offensive, agreeable connotations, the magazine may even have a place in high street shops alongside magazines such as Kerrang and NME.

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

From very early on, I had a good idea of the type of social group I was trying to represent. From carrying out primary research, I found out the majority of my readers would fall into a few different categories, and I knew this meant I had to tailor my magazine to suit.

Late teenagers/ early twenties: The style of writing in the magazine should be quite informal, and nearing on chatty. This will help the teenagers at least connect and engage with the text more than if they were reading a high-class newspaper article.

Indie music: This is probably the most important thing I found out. The Indie culture is broad, and its definition is not set in stone. Representing the Indie social group in my magazine meant trying to portray a bit of diversity, including the light, and the dark in the same publication. I did this mainly through my colour scheme, with the bold white and orange colouring working with the dark grey gradients used in the backgrounds, to create a medium between the two sides.

I feel that this balance, diversity and versatility in layout and colour represent the seemingly undefined social group that is Indie, by representing the musical style from which the social group derived.

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

Overall, my media product uses, or at least uses elements of products in the real music magazine industry. My logo design is based loosely around the NME logo, using the idea of having a logo that could stand out and be recognised regardless of any other activity on the page, and if necessary partial obscurity.

My magazine also makes use of focal imagery. This is the best way of catching the interest of the audience. Before any text is read, the audience is already asking themselves questions about the image's placement on the page, this will make the audience more likely to read on, to find out.

My magazine has build up a fairly strong house style, with a grey, white and orange colour scheme throughout, and reoccurring font styles and sizes to give continuity to the pages. The masthead, although varying slightly in size, keeps its position and prominence on the page, to allow the audience to always have a reference to know what the page is about from first glance.

I have developed conventions in my work mainly through the boldness of the masthead throughout the designs. In most of my second hand research the masthead was slightly hidden, and the eye was drawn later on. In my magazine I wanted the audience to see the focal image, then be drawn straight to the masthead, containing the title, to gain as much of an understanding of the story before they read any blocks of text on the page.

I feel my colour scheme is almost confrontational with most music magazines. The magazines I have studied either stick to a 'light' theme or a 'dark' theme, without much grey area. To appeal to my target audience, and the style of music they listen to, I wanted to create a medium, that's appealing to all music listeners, and in particular my target audience.