Sunday 23 April 2017

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

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
 
During the course of this main task project, I have expanded and built upon skills I learnt during the preliminary task. In the preliminary task I used Adobe InDesign for the first time, and now in the main task I have continued to use it and develop my skills on it.
 
As the main task has to be more professional, I have had to perfect my skills on InDesign in order to make the magazine pages look as though they belong in an actual, genuine magazine. I also adapted the skills I already have in Adobe Photoshop CS6. In order to get my magazine images to professional standards, I applied levels to the photographs to increase the contrasts and overall image quality. Then I used the lasso tool to cut out the image of my main model, as I didn't want him on the fence background. This was a challenge, as it was something I hadn't done in detail to this degree before. It took me many attempts, however I eventually got there with a good finished edit.
 
The advantages of using Photoshop is that it is the most advanced photo editing software on the internet, therefore it is the best choice for editing and cropping images like I have here. When editing my images I applied adjustments such as curves and levels in order to bring out the contrast which in turn gives them a better quality, and in essence a more professional quality. The disadvantage is that the lasso tool is very precise and intricate, meaning it is very easy to make a mistake and have to start again, which is what happened to me multiple times in the process of trying to crop out this model from the background.
 
 
In terms of InDesign, I have used it to make my work more professional, compared to how professional it looked in the preliminary task. The advantage of InDesign is that it is professional, and it t is what all the professional magazine editors use to compile the content when constructing their magazine pages, therefore it was the perfect choice for me. However, the disadvantage is that I am still not 100% skilled in InDesign, meaning I have spent lots of times undoing and reviewing work that I have gotten wrong as a result of not doing it right the first time, simply because I do not have much experience in it.

The advantages of using slideshare and prezi is that they are more exciting ways of getting my content onto the blog, without the need for just basic blog entries. The disadvantage however is that these are put online for anyone to see, which means there is potential for someone else to copy and plagiarise my work, in turn infringing copyright.




Tuesday 11 April 2017

How did you attract / address your audience?

In order to answer this question, I will produce annotations of each page I created (Front page, contents page and double page spread) on different blog posts. In order to make it more creative and more interesting, I will create each one on  Microsoft powerpoint, and embed it into the blog via slideshare.

Wednesday 5 April 2017

Who would be the audience for your media product?

As previously stated in my coursework blog, my target audience are 15-30 year olds, interested in Rock n Roll and pop music (because this magazine is based around Pop and Rock), liking bands such as the Beatles and Coldplay. They would read the magazine because it makes them happy that they have learnt something new about pop rock and the people within the community. It also shows they enjoy reading about the latest news regarding pop rock music, that they are interested in this genre. They read it to keep up to date with the latest goings on of the rock and pop community.

This is further outlined in my brand eye research task, which I created in the research and planning stage of my main task. I created this to understand more the type of people that would read my magazine; my target audience.


As well as a brand eye, I also created a target audience analysis to pinpoint exactly who I aimed my magazine towards. I believe I have tailored this magazine towards my target audience, and this will be further explained in detailed annotation on the upcoming evaluation blog posts.

In my target audience analysis I detailed such things as the clothes they would wear, which in this case would be mainstreamed clothes, seeing as pop rock is somewhat seen as a mainstream music genre, the type of genre everybody listens to, without much defined, eccentric culture to support it. Therefore the types of clothes they would wear are items such as shirt and jeans, just typical everyday wear. Seeing as the target audience are 15-30 I presumed that the majority of the audience would not be in a position of seniority or management yet, therefore they have more low level jobs such as retail.