Georgiana Angus

The uses and gratification theory, asking the question on "What people do with media?" instead of what media does to people. It focuses more on the audience and the consumer instead on the production and the message, such as the HYPODERMIC NEEDLE MODEL. It's the idea that audiences understand and know why they consume media text and are active in the consumption. It suggests that people use media to fulfil certain aspects of their lives, that audiences use media for gratification.

There are a few different ways that people use media within this theory.

People use media because they like to identify with the characters or situations the media text is portraying. It can be used to help them understand themselves, or their lives and may actually be beneficial to the consumer. This section is coming up an awful lot in the media relating to representation of minority groups so those said groups have a character to identify with. For example the lack of representation of People Of Colour is a huge problem in the media as it means a vast majority of the audience does not have a character to self identify with.

People use media as a way to educate themselves on the world and people around them, this one is pretty self explanatory.

People use media to be entertained, they use it to get enjoyment out of it. In other words it can be used for escapism from everyday life. That might be why fantasy is such a massive genre as within it you can experience things that would not be possible with the constrains of our world.

People use media as a way to be able to have social interactions. Such as talking about that new episode of the walking dead, or having a book discussion online. One of the many reasons people find new media text is because of the social stigma around that text.

As media is such a major part of our society I asked a few people why they think people consume media as who is better to answer this question, but the people who consume it.

"People consume media because it gives people the opportunity to look at topics from other perspective so we can gain an understanding of how other people look at those topics, which could influence the way we see the world."

My first question was related to the name of the magazine. As my magazine has a fictional aspect to it, along with a light futuristic theme, I decided to base my name around something space related that also might be related to music or fiction.

I had a choice of three names the candidate could pick from 

APOLLO

PANDORA 

AULETE 

APOLLO is the greek god of music, so I feel like I had the music and fiction aspect down. In addition it is a name heavily related to space exploration and travel. I feel like APOLLO fits all the criteria I wanted the name to fit. 

PANDORA is also a Greek name related to space and greek mythology, so it checks the space and fictional theme. However PANDORA is not related to music but instead to gifts as PANDORA literally means "Gifts for all". That is probably why the popular jewellery brand is also called PANDORA.

AULETE is the one that checks the least of the boxes. AULETE does not relate to ancient greek mythology but rather the ancient culture as an AULOS is actually a greek flute and an AULETE is someone who plays that instrument. So it definitely targets the music category however it does not relate to fiction or to space so it fits my genre the least. 

According to my questionnaire most people liked the name APOLLO over the other two. APOLLO was voted for 54% of the time, with PANDORA taking 33% and AULETE with 13%

This makes it very clear to me that APOLLO is my best bet. Which is convenient as out of the three, it matches all my pre set criteria and is actually my favourite too. 

In my second question I asked if they would prefer to see a band on the cover, or an artistically pleasing cover. This was so I could evaluate what kind of photograph should I aim towards and If I had to organise a band photo shoot for the main image. It turns out most people would prefer to see and artistic cover over an actual band or artist on the cover. Just under 70% said that they would prefer things like album art over the 30% that said they would prefer a band. This again is useful as I was going to go for a more artistic cover in the first place and now that I know will be more well received than a band on the cover reassures me that it is the right choice. 

In my third question I asked what type of font people preferred out of SERIF, SANS SERIF and HANDWRITING. 

Surprisingly the one I liked the most and was leaning more towards , sans serif, was actually the least popular, pulling in a percentage of 8%. The other two SERIF and HANDWRITING had the same amount votes at 46% each. This has lead me to do some serious thinking as now I will need to evaluate if I want to appeal more to what the audience wants or If i go against what they said and still continue to use SANS SERIF. I will have to consider this and try out multiple font faces for my final magazine and who knows, maybe the audience was right on which one will look better. 

My final question was related to the colour scheme of the magazine. I predesigned three different colour palettes that I thought portrayed my main themes of fiction, space and music. 

The top one of just Blue was designed to look like space and have futuristic element to it, this fits into the theme of space I have. In addition blue is said to heighten people creativity and intellect and I want my magazine to portray those virtues. This was the least favourite with on 13%

I had one which was purple-blue as I tried to make it look like the night sky and sunrise. This one was the favourite with a percentage of 59%. I wanted the colours to feel much like a dream and fantasy as this would tie in idea of fiction. 

My last on was Pink-Orange. Again following the theme of sky I made a colour palette that looked like a warm sunset. This pulled in a vote of 27% ranking second best. It again has the elements of fantasy and fiction. 

What is target audience? Target Audience is the intended audience or readership of the media text of which you are producing. A target audience is a specific and carefully selected group of people within the large populace that the media text is geared towards in a specific way dependent on the audience.

 

A target audience can be formed of people of a certain age group, gender, martial status etc. Most people don't just specify on category but instead use a mixture of many. One popular group for target audience is heterosexual men aged 20-30.

 

Other groups, that are not the target audience, may be interested in the product they are not the main focus of the producers.

 

One of the biggest mistakes a company could make when creating a target audience is trying to appeal to everyone and then failing to appeal to anyone.

 

However, I am a big believer that you cannot fit people into clean cut boxes and that you shouldn't try to categories people. However I am also aware that without a target audience, it will be hard to create a magazine that generates a profit. Considering all this I will have to develop a way to be able to figure out a target audience, whilst also maintaining the belief that I can not box people up.

 

Thinking about all of this, meet Morgan.

 

Morgan is a student currently in higher education between the ages of 17 - 22. They are intellectual but find their talent in Art and Fashion more than mathematics and science. They study Essay subjects and are usually extroverted despite their differences from society. They dress deliberately different and you may argue try to hard but Morgan wouldn't care, they wear what they want.

 

Morgan is Socially aware and prides themselves in that, in addition they consider themselves progressive with a strong willingness to learn new things. However despite their eagerness to help society, they do come from a privileged background, and background which allows them to fund their love for the arts and social justice.

 

Musically wise Morgan listens to everything that they find sounds interesting and unique, however Morgan is someone who never had to worry about not having things, so Morgan is not a fan of people who strive more towards materialist goals as that is not something they understands. Morgan likes music with a message behind it. They are the kind of person who will memorise all the lyrics to all the songs.

 

Morgan is on the look out for something that will combine their love of music and fiction and also their love of the arts together in one giant super mesh.



Q's contents page is something that I want to take a lot of inspiration from. It has a lot going on, but not so much that it is distracting. It has all the special feature and regulars that the reader would need to find without being cluttered, and thus allows you to find what you would like to see quickly and easily. This I feel is a lot better than having a minimalist contents page as, despite the fact that it would look nice, does not serve the function of a contents.

 

Q's main colour is red and white, and this is present in the magazine contents. It has a red border and red lines to highlight the different articles. This may be because red is a bright colour and draws the eye, so having red under the special features would draw the eye of the reader to articles and hopefully make them more interested in the magazine and therefore buy it. Red also brings text forward and highlights the information well to make it standout to the reader. Red is also know to stimulate the viewer to make quick decisions, hence why in advertisements the "BUY NOW" and "GET IT TODAY" are usually in red to stimulate the viewer into being rash and buying the product. They could be using the red to stimulate the reader into buying it in a quick decision or to look through the magazine for the articles and then interesting them into buying them.

 

While most of the important information is in the text. The images play an important role for the magazine. They have laid out really interesting images that catches the readers attention and strategically placed the page number on the image so you can find what is related to the image quickly without flicking through.

This is the double page spread of Clash magazine, and much like the cover, continues with the general style of simplicity and cleanliness. Clash has a very simple Image of a young artist in close up. The image is not busy, aside from his shirt, and has too main colours of orange and green. The shirt is loud and eye catching, making it stand out more than the rest of the image. This is relevant as in the text their is a reference to the artists bizarre fashion sense. The colour of the green shirt is dragged over into the main body where they credit the creators of this article. This maintains the simple colour scheme and makes it more aesthetically pleasing. As much of clash is dedicated to the simplicity of music and it's creators, making a simple image look beautiful all the more reinforces the idea that something doesn't have to be complex to be pretty.

  In the main text, the artist states how he enjoys vinyl's, especially the soundtrack to a classic film "Watership Down" made in the 70's.  To convey this, the image holds the essence of 70's fashion photography. With the complex and brightly coloured clothing, mixed with dramatic lighting and colouring, gives it the feeling of a vintage photograph. Doing this makes us truly see how much influence this artist takes from different styles, and proves to us that he has a deep respect for different styles

The text is styled in the conventional article style of columns. However it is written in serif and a very classical looking font that it makes it look more like an old news article. This further in keeps with the theme of a vintage, 70's style and makes the page look even more put together. Most of the text is in serif aside from the name of the artist "KING KRULE" which is written in block sans serif. This makes this piece of text stand considerably out compared to the rest of the text and thus leads to the conclusion that it is a more useful piece of information. In addition, sans serif is more of a modern font style. Having the modern font surrounded entirely by more traditional font on the rest of the page could be implying that despite the old fashioned style of this artist, is that he still has modern aspects to him, as said in the text, making him a very unique individual.

MASTHEAD

The mast head on CLASH follows a strict guideline throughout all the editions published in recent years. It is always block white and bold, placed dead in the centre, and usually overlays the the Image. This makes it extremely prominent and eye-catching and thus brands the page. As It overlays the Image, it connotes the idea that it is not truly about the Image and the looks, but more about the words and the content of the magazine and the music. Despite this, CLASH still puts a lot of time and effort in the image, but we will get to that later. The masthead has a very simplistic font in serif. This suggests to us that it is a simple magazine that serves the three functions it advertises, MUSIC / FASHION / FILM, and doesn't try to divert from that focus, so you know what you are getting.

IMAGE

The Image on this cover is a very beautifully coloured and designed photo. CLASH magazine has a knack for creating gorgeous covers yet keeping them simple and too the point so that you are not diverted away from the music but can still appreciate the aesthetic beauty behind it. This edition of the magazine is the "American dream edition" and has the caption for the singer, "Ready to bloom again". The photo captures the fuzzy feel and atmosphere of a dream, whilst at the same time using colours similar to that of a new bloom. Doing this makes the picture feel warm and welcoming, much like the idea of summer and flowers, but also by extension of the American dream as the image radiates a sense of happiness. The colours of blue, red, and green are washed out slightly by an orange hue which we immediately associate with a warm summer afternoon. 

Lana is laying on the grass with her eyed closed and looking rather majestic. Having her eyes shut also further enforces the sense of a dream and of a warm afternoon laying in the sun. It again makes us think of summer, and as the main cover line is about blooming and flowers, making it summer like makes you feel like think of all the colours of plants and flowers, colours that were captured in the photo and her clothes. You could argue that Lana is the flower, about to bloom into life. This is as she appears almost engulfed by the fur around her that it's like she is growing out of it. This again links back to the cover line of that Lana is about to bloom again.

COVER LINES

There is one cover line on the entire photo, the rest is just a list of Musicians who are featured in the magazine. This follows with the rest of the house style CLASH has going for them, which is very simplistic and minimalist. It again reinforces the idea that the people who read CLASH don't need to be bought with flashy cover lines as the main theme is it is more about the music and less about the industry and advertisement around it. Even the main cover line does not appear showy or tempting. It merely states how Lana is blooming again. This factors together heavily stress the idea that the magazine is only hear to serve one purpose, and that is to provide reader knowledge on music, fashion, and film. 

It is a joint venture company in the UK, based around analysing the habits and trends of consumers of magazine.

Over 250 magazines are covered by this survey, this just shows how large the magazine survey really spans. 

This is an estimate on how many people within their target audience who have read. The readerships shows the audience demographics, and can also be used to predict. However it also demonstrates how many readers move away from the norm.

CIRCULATION

The amount of copies of the magazine sold or distributed 

There are a multitude of genres in music, and those genres have many sub-genres and some of those even have sub-genres of their own. 

Now a days their is a large and diverse range of people, personalities and cultures, it's no wonder that music has evolved to cater towards all these niche audiences. As someone who is creating a music magazine you need to think of the genre and who would want to buy from that genre. It would be very easy to claim it to be a Pop Magazine as that is a very large target audience and would guarantee an audience. But Pop, like all other genres, can be broken down and divided into sub categorise and an editor would have to decide if they wanted to include all those genres into the magazine and possibly lose readers as they were not interested in those genres, or they would decide on one specific sub genre and focus on that. 

It is important to understand that just because something is in the same category, does not mean they are the same style and that the same people like it. For instance, in the rock genre there is Heavy Metal, and Punk. People who like Punk may not be very interested in Heavy metal, and vice versa. So by studying this I can hone in on an audience and cater towards their interests in the magazine. 

The hierarchy of need is a psychological theory proposed by psychologist Andrew Maslow. Maslow research and studied the exemplary members of society, suggesting that is what we as humans should strive to be. One example would be Einstein. He believed that studying the mentally ill or people of less social calibre would cause a the social hierarchy to go astray and that we would base our ideas on what is right from the "Lesser" members of society. So he only studied the healthiest and most privileged people.   

After I created the front cover of my school magazine, it was vital that I compare it to an official magazine to see if I followed the codes and conventions of school magazines in general and how may compared to that of a officially produced piece of text.

The official magazine is a lot more content filled than the cover of mine. With multiple coverlines in an array of different styles it has a very intricate and complex cover, making it interesting to look at and read. In comparison to mine which has two main cover lines and one sticker to advertise the contents. This makes the cover not a very good advertisement for the contents of the magazine as it suggests that there are not many interesting stories on the inside.

The coverlines on the official one follow the same general trend of colour font and size thus adding to the house style. Each are preceded by, or followed by and arrow which also follows the colour scheme of the rest of the coverlines. This makes it pleasing to look at, and generally more exciting than just having one basic font with no stickers. My coverlines don't follow a general colour scheme, though they do follow a similar font style, the lack of a colour scheme takes away from a potential house style and thus decreases the quality of my magazine. It does not make it easy to look at or generally pleasing to see, so my coverlines for the final piece will need a lot of work.

The coverlines on the official magazine have bolded key words to make them stand out against the rest and therefore draw the eye to it. This is a trick that I attempted to follow in mine. I bolded the word "UCAS" as because of the target audience of the school magazine (6th formers) UCAS is a big thing, so by putting it in bold should hopefully draw the attention of some students who are thinking about or worried about UCAS. My other bold section was the year "2015" which was a bad choice on my part. It is not exactly relevant to the audience and does not draw the eye. Instead I should have change the bold work from "2015" to "SUMMER" as this would attract the attention of students looking forward to a few weeks of school. So hopefully in my final piece I will rectify this and make the bolding more relevant and useful.

For both magazines we had the picture of a smiling student, looking into the camera. As the targets audiences age is different for each magazine the age of the model changed also. BACK TO SCHOOl is aimed mostly a parents with young children who have just started or are a few years into their education. So the magazine is designed to help parents get to grips with the ins and outs of having children in school. By putting a cute adorable child on the cover, smiling up at you, it suggests that if you read the magazine and get the tips it offers, your child could also be happy and as healthy looking as the model on the front. By rule of thirds the child's head is dead in the centre of the page, making it the most noticeable thing on the cover.

THE STUDENT PROJECT is not aimed at parents but more at the students themselves. So I used a model the same age as 6th Form students as this would be relatable to the target audience. As she is smiling and wearing nice clothes, and her hair is done in a smart but attractive style, it indicates to the reader that she takes pride in the way she looks and also enjoys school. The magazine is made to make 6th form life a little easier by giving out tips and advice, so by having a smart, happy looking girl on the cover suggest that the magazine can do all this for you. In comparison to the official magazine, my models head is not in the centre, but rather more in the top third of the picture. This still draws the eye to it, but it allows more of their clothes to be shown, and that was needed to demonstrate her smartness. The Model's clothes in the official magazine is not needed to be shown as it is a typical primary school uniform, and you can tell this from the collar, so immediately you know the model is a primary school student. Whereas in my magazine, I needed more of the clothes shown to make it clear that she is a 6th form student.

Overall, I can draw many comparisons between the two magazines, but their are few notable differences that make the official magazine look more professional and put together.