On my front cover I have used many conventions, such as, I have used one main image on my front cover so that I attract my audience but don’t overcrowd and confuse the page with too many pictures. At the top of my front cover there is a pug which includes a tagline to say how good the magazine is and why people should buy it. Below this is the masthead, I feel that the masthead is the most important part of the front cover as it lets potential buyers know what magazine it is which is especially good if the are regular buyers looking specifically for my magazine. The masthead for my magazine is “AMPLIFIED” this is to show that the magazine is about rock music that should be played out loud it is also quick and catchy for people to remember easily.
The colour scheme I used also follows the convention of mainly using black and white for text but using red and yellow to make specific parts stand out. I have included a date, issue number and website at the bottom of my page to allow readers to make sure they read every issue and check out the website if they miss out an issue. Finally I included a barcode as this is a legal requirement and I couldn’t have sold my magazine without it.
My contents page follows the same colour scheme as the front cover to show that it is part of the same magazine also the same font is carried through to show the continuity. I used the convention of contrasting colours to attract the audience to competition on my magazine that they can enter, they can look at the other red text to see what main pages are included in my magazine.
On this page I have challenged the convention of using a big image and writing below or beside it, I have done this by using a pretty simple picture of Nickelback in the background and writing over the top of it. My main story is shown again in the bottom left corner of the page with a quote and picture alongside the page number. The final convention I used was putting a print screen of my cover on to the page to again remind viewers what magazine they are reading.
As in most other magazines I have included page numbers in the bottom corners so that it is easy for reader to quickly find what they are looking for after looking at my contents page. For my title I have used the same red text as in my contents and front cover to keep my magazine looking well matched as you go through. 
My main interview text is reasonably simple and not too formal, the questions are in bold, and answers not, so that people can differentiate easily between them without them looking too different. I did not follow the convention of a kicker as I feel this would’ve made it look to formal and this would not suit my magazine of its target audience. However I did follow the convention of using captions from my text to make readers more intrigued to look at the interview but one of these goes across the page joint which is not following conventions but I feel it is necessary to bring the pages together and readers will still be able to see the caption as the text is big enough.
Overall across my three pages I have used and challenged many magazine conventions where I felt necessary to gain the aimed effect on the target audience.
My magazine uses a main colour scheme of black white and red this represents my target audience well because most of my target audience that would read my rock magazine would be ‘emo’, ‘gothic’ or ‘scene’ and they are normally more attracted to the darker colours such as black and red. Also my main pictures include an artist wearing skinny jeans and converse which is the kind of clothes my target audience would be wearing so this would attract them more because they will be able to relate to my music artist.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
After designs for my magazine are drawn up I would need a publisher to make it before I can distribute it. I would get a company such as Bauer or IPC to publish it however both of these already publish similar magazines such as; Q, Kerrang and NME. Therefore I might be more successful going to a different publisher such as Dennis Publishing. Once published my magazine can be distributed, I would chose to distribute it nationally in supermarkets and other shops like WHSmith, it wouldn’t be sold in little corner shops and small newsagents as they are too small and my magazine has quite a specific target audience.
Who would be the target audience for your media product?
My target audience would be people between the ages of 15 – 25 that are in to rock music, because after my target audience research they seemed most interested in music magazines. I also aimed it at people in social class status groups of B or C because they would need extra money to be able to afford luxuries such as my magazine, but people in class a may be more suited to read something more formal than my magazine. 
How did you attract/ address your audience?
I attracted my audience at first glance with the bright contrasting colours of red and yellow with black and white 
and by using images of people that my target audience can relate to and perhaps aspire to be. Also I used informal language to address my audience as I wanted my magazine to appear friendly and easy for anyone to just pick up and read.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I used many technologies whilst creating my blog and media products. Firstly I learnt how to create a blog and after many attempts, how to upload things such as my powerpoint. Obviously I used the internet as well to access my blog and also to research magazine conventions and how they are used and to download specific fonts from dafonts.com so that I could use them for my media product. To create my media products, firstly I had to use my digital camera to take pictures that I considered using, I used different functions on the camera to adjust the focus and zoom until I got the exact shots I wanted. 
I then uploaded them onto my laptop and used photoshop and paintshop to edit out any blemishes in my photos. I found out that any smaller images that had not been taken with a digital camera or had been zoomed, lost their quality so I had to be careful that I didn’t used pixelated images in my final product.
The main technology I learnt to use properly for the first time was photoshop/paintshop. I used many tools on there to create my desired products, such as using the selection tool to adjust the focus on specific parts of my picture or make edges of a picture darker, as seen in my album cover.
The dropper tool was used when I wanted to ensure I matched colours so I used it to select previous colours that I had used so I could get the exact colour again. Before I put any of my images into my media product I first cropped them to the exact size I wanted them. I found out that I could use the straighten tool after I made a picture on my front page slanted but then realised it looked better straight. I used the makeover tool, clone brush and skin smoothing to get rid of any spots or blemishes on my model. 
I used the paintbrush at the end of creating my media product to create a blurred effect around some of the text on all of my pages. The picture of the bass guitar on my contents page was created by getting a picture of a bass guitar and hen using the background eraser tool to rub away the background leaving the bass there for me to copy onto my contents page. 
The two final tools I used were the text and rectangle tool, I used these for all my text and to help create the pug above my picture on the other page. 
Finally, I learnt how to use the separate layers effectively and to ensure the correct things were at the front of the page and to make sure I saved several copies in different places in the correct format so that I didn’t loose my work and could edit it later.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final product?
At the beginning of the year I created a preliminary task, as I had never used photoshop before creating this my task appeared very basic and not very professional. My front cover included one mid shot in the centre of my page on top of the blue background.
I then put a slanted image in the left corner and a barcode in the bottom right, but if I was to create this now I would use skin smoothing to get rid of blemishes on my smaller picture and I would make the barcode smaller so that it didn’t stand out so much on my page. 
The text I used on my front page is too bright, although the masthead stands out clearly my tagline is not clear or easy for people to read, also it does not follow the left hand third convention which I realised after research, should’ve been followed. Another thing that should’ve been changed on my front cover is the type of font I used because it is fairly boring and doesn’t make the magazine stand out from others. For my real front cover I ensured I made all of the above changes and used many more of the tools in photoshop to make it look a lot more professional. I also ensured I included a price on my magazine, unlike my preliminary task; this would attract more buyer as it is reasonably priced for a magazine of its type. The contents page for my preliminary task is also very basic and lacks interesting page titles to get the reader interested. 
Once again the font isn’t very good and the titles for pages vary in size which makes it look unprofessional and cheap. There is no reference to the pictures at the bottom of the page and they look out of place because two of them have not got a plain background because at the time I did not know how to create this, and the third had no link at all to any of my stories above.
For my real task of creating my music magazine I ensured I used specifically chosen fonts that matched my magazine type and that I used them throughout the pages to show continuity in my work. I used different images that matched my stories and edited them in specific ways to ensure they appeared exactly as I wanted them to this even included editing out backgrounds if I didn’t need them in photos. The other convention I used in my main product was using pictures as backgrounds this made my pages look much more interesting and more professional than the plain colours I used in my preliminary tasks. 
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