Since the preliminary I have developed my skills in all fields of content creating, though admittedly some more than others. While my editing skills generally remains the same as I used the same editing software and techniques, my photography has greatly improved and I feel I have come far in creating an image with a lot to say and not just a boring photograph.





In my preliminary, my Image was a one minuet picture a took with a friend I found who wasn't busy. I didn't put a lot of effort into framing or lighting, and just took the photo as It was and worked with what I have. However, for my final piece I had a stronger knowledge of what made up a good photograph and how I should frame the shot and play with lighting to get an interesting dynamic of colours in the photo. I feel that if I went back to the preliminary task now, I would try a lot harder on my raw images, instead of relying on fancy editing to get my result.

I now understand the importance of careful planning and how if you put hard work into the project before production, then the production process is so much more easier to get through.

I also learnt about the importance of good content within my magazine. For my contents page of the preliminary, I had very few articles, that were boring and unappealing to look at. The colouring was terrible and the quote was cheesy, but my final piece definitively has a contents page that is an improvement on the last. I learnt about the importance of a colour scheme and good structure and format on a page, instead of just throwing the article titles where I think they looked best. In addition, I made the articles and their descriptions much more appealing in the final piece than the preliminary.

Overall I feel like I have come a long way from the preliminary task. I have learnt a lot as a content creator about what is required of you, and where you can bend and twist the rules a bit to make something unique and special to you. I have learnt that planning and preparation are a huge part of the entire production process, and without I, it would make a mess of the content, and make it extremely difficult to make a good product in the end

Conventions are described as a way in which something is usually done. So it's basically the most common thing to do. Conventions appear everywhere in society as It's a habit of ours to follow the Status Quo. It appears in just about anything, social habits, political opinions and media production alike. It's what's popular.

In our case with media production, what is popular is what sells, so following conventions may not do much for you on the artistic front, but will probably guaranty sales.

So lets talk about conventions of magazines and how they compare to my magazine.

As I'm creating an indie music magazine I will be comparing it to real indie magazines on the market and to their conventions.

The Cover


 My cover follow a lot of the conventions of an indie magazine cover. With its single word name, and it's minimalist design it would be hard to call it anything other than an indie magazine, but there are a few differences that I feel also adds to the product. However lets talk about similarities first.
My magazine follows the conventions of having a solid background that two of the four examples follow. This is a convention of indie magazines as nearly all the covers will have a solid coloured back and the main image will over lay the colour. In addition I followed the convention of having the cover lines towards the bottom of the page and not fill up the page to much with loud and extra imagery.

A lot of what I did that followed conventions also followed my questionnaire that I sent out to people within my target audience which can be found here. Pretty much every part of the questionnaire was followed and these all fit with the conventions of the magazine. However a few parts of the questionnaire that I followed did not fit in with the convention of Indie magazines.

I asked the question if they wanted to see the musician on the cover or the album art. The vote was a steep lean to the album art. I followed this and used art work on the cover instead of just a solid image of the band. This goes against indie magazines as they always have the artist on the cover, mostly shot with a close up or mid shot.

My magazine generally uses the same font face as the indie magazines which is sans serif. This goes against my questionnaire where most people voted on a hand written font or a serif font.


The Contents 




 My contents does not follow the style of the contents of indie magazines but more of magazines like Q. This is something that looking back on a regret, however I still like the way the cover came out.
My contents follows conventions of having key articles and main images from these article to entice the reader, just like Q does. I also used a bar on the top to highlight the magazine title and the page title like Q did as well. In addition I used Q's idea of numbering the images and putting lines between the different key articles. My contents page doesn't really go against conventions and this is both a good thing and bad thing. I feel like I should have tried more to make the contents page my own and not just reused an established style, but it does mean it's easier to navigate and understand for the audience.


How do I represent different social groups in my magazine?

Evaluation question 5

 In order for my magazine to be as successful as possible and to resonate with my audience model, I had to consider social groups and how I could represent different aspects of these social groups.

Firstly, we must ask ourselves what a social group is. It can generally be defined as a group of individuals who share similar interests and a sense of unity. Social groups is one of those things that can't be defined into clean cut boxes and is dependant on individual opinion. So choosing a clean cut social group to represent is harder than expected.

However, going of my audience model, it's easy to figure out who they would interact with and how to define this group.

You can find my audience model here

As a result, it's best to define the target social group is more "Indie".

 Indie culture is a lifestyle which follows social trends that are considered to consciously deviate from the mainstream. One common belief within indie culture is anti-conformity. I believe that Indie is more of an umbrella term for people who are fans of things that are good content but not necessarily popular or conventional. So there is no specific style of genre for the name INDIE. It's subjective, just like everything else.

However this can sometimes be seen as pretentious as many believe people who sell identify as Indie deliberately try to be different for the sake of it. As I said, the boxes are blurred and opinion based. But because I am making the magazine, we will be going of my personal opinion of Indie, which is extremely broad.

So my social group is individuals who appreciate good art that might not necessarily be popular. Because the social group is so broad, it's hard to define the style and culture. Unlike other social groups like PUNK ROCK or HIPPIES which have nearly clean cut and defined styles, Indie style is ironically dependant on the Individual. However there is a great appreciation for art, modern or classic, and a strong love of aesthetically pleasing colours, usually pastels. They also tend to be more well read and intellectual than some other social groups as they can find good content outside of popular culture on their own .

I tried to represent this in my magazine through the cover, content and articles. 

 Firstly my target audience is young and probably still in education. To represent this I had an article on a young band with members still in full time study. I did this to allow the audience to relate to the band and feel more connected and represented within the magazine.

Secondly my target audience does not have a defined gender. I did not want the magazine to be either feminine or masculine, so I used neutral colour that can't really be seen as feminine or masculine. In addition on the cover I have multiple genders represented in the Image. However it actually is hard to tell who is who apart from one. I feel this is a good representation as it shows the people in the image are more than just their gender but artists instead. I feel like the social group I am representing will be happy with this choice as they can identify with someone within the magazine.

My social group are also intellectual. I have gone over many times how there are multiple intertextual references to different aspects of culture and art. I feel including these references is representing the audience in a positive light as they will hopefully understand the reference and feel flattered by the compliment to their intelligence.

Overall my magazine is an attempt to attract young individuals, and make them feel represented and important.



How Did You Attract/Address your target audience?

I hold strong to the philosophy that If I create something, it has to be something I want to see in the world. Because ultimately, if I'm putting time and effort into a product, and I don't believe or like the message the product gives, then I'm not going to put out a good quality piece of content. My fellow student goes a lot more into depth with this in her evaluation, and explains it a lot better than me. It can be found here. But the moral and idea is still there.
Me and my target audience are one in the same. Whilst I can draw differences between my preferences and the preferences of my target audience, it was important to keep in mind what would I want to see on the market, and does what I want to see reflect with others or just myself.

So I did have to draw a line between me and my audience and understand that not everyone wants to see what I want to see. This is an idea that I kept in mind throughout the production process and hopefully allowed me to create something I am both proud of and will attract a large audience.


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