As research planning_updated_2011-201

AS MEDIA STUDIES
FOUNDATION PORTFOLIO

RESEARCH & PLANNING

CENTRE NO: 11049

ST FRANCIS XAVIER COLLEGE

My name is:…Marcus Thomas……………

Candidate No:……2612……………..

Preliminary Project – Research & Planning

• How did you think about target audience?
It was going to be a student magazine so I was looking at a target audience with their age ranging from 15+
and made the main image a student who was around that age.
• How did awareness of that audience impact upon your visual design and choice of
language?
I didn’t alter my choice of language to attract my target audience. I just made my main image a student
because I thought it’ll appeal more. Which didn’t work

• What key points did you learn about Adobe Photoshop and InDesign in constructing your
artefacts?
I found it hard to use both so I didn’t really learn any key points in constructing my artifact but in the future I
will spend more of my free time using these softwares to do much better in my task. Also, I didn’t finish
my front cover page at all so I could understand why I never got a level 3

Preliminary Project
• College Cover • College Contents

Reflections & Feedback
• What would you do differently next time?
Add more text and possibly more pictures, generic features of a magazine cover will need to be included. And
be more serious about the task
• What kind of feedback did you get that might influence you?

• What aspects of your understanding of Adobe Photoshop & InDesign do you need to
improve?
Nearly everything because I found it completely difficult. I need to improve my work by using key features of
the softwares and by asking people for more help

The music genre of my music magazine is
hip-hop:
• The genre of my music magazine is hip-hop. The reason
why I chose this genre is because there is many codes and
conventions associated with the genre. For example; an
artist on the front cover of the magazine would have a
solemn look, wearing jewellery or smart clothing and the
fonts would be bold with red, white or black colouring to
show dangerousness, love or power which is quite
formulaic and easy to follow
• and my chosen title is……The Par……… because… par spelt
backwards is rap and I thought that if the audience view the title
in this way it would show them that the magazine is interesting
and quite enigmatic but if they read what’s inside the magazine
they could find out more about it

So I researched this genre of music publication
and studied:

• Model 1 • Model 2

I researched both front covers and found out that both of these magazines are not colourful
and the fonts on the magazine are not fancy which would only be attracting teenagers and
adults due to the serious approach to the magazine font. Also, each of the magazine front
covers features artists who are showing a fierce expression which shows their stereotypical
representation that they receive from the media which depicts the rough lifestyle they had as a
youth. The front covers also tells me that the hip-hop genre attracts people who are of a
responsible age to consume a music magazine of this content.

What I learned from this was…..
• Cover Design • Cover Lines
I learnt that the cover lines should be
I learnt that the cover design should of quite short and catchy. The main
included a large masthead with the cover line must be large but smaller
main image sitting on it. The majority than the masthead which will be
of the page should be filled with both more visible to the audience and
text and a picture(s) to enlighten the must be relevant to the main image.
feel of the magazine cover to attract I’ve also learnt that the cover lines is
an audience. The audience wouldn’t a huge selling point so it makes sense
be attracted to any magazine which is if it relates to an artist of the hip-hop
bare and has no design at all. Also, I scene
gathered that the corporate identity is
the main selling point of a magazine
so it needs to be quite unique and
noticeable

For my music magazine….
• Target Audience: Teenagers & young adults
• Frequency: Monthly

• Cover price: £4.00
• Publisher: Marcus THOMAS
• Unique Selling Point: THE UK’S MOST DIVERSE HIP-HOP MAGAZINE, which gives an
insight as to what my magazine is about, the magazine is supposed to show a diverse range of age hence the
reason why a teenage is the main image of my front cover. Also, my masthead would be a unique selling point
due to the world play used switching “The RAP” to “The PAR”.

Target Audience
The target audience I would be attracting would be roughly be teenagers and young persons from a working class
background from the UK as my magazine is a mainstream magazine attracting young people in the UK only. My
magazine will be encouraging young people to consume my product because when researching the hip-hop
magazine I gathered that all of the artists on the magazine would contain young artists on the front cover page.
My target audience would also be appealing to young people who are being raised in the slums or a poorer
suburban area in the city. This is because most of these rappers do come from the ghetto so they would have a
large following of where they are from and this could spread socially. There is a huge chance that the target
audience consuming my product would be located in a certain area in the city which is close to a derived area
where people want to be rich or express their lifestyle through hip-hop music which has been heavily influenced by
the rappers on the front cover so that’s why my target audience may come from inner-city slums.

E.g. of how my target
audience may look like

This is the face of the magazine
• Front cover • This is how it works
My target audience for this magazine were
supposed to be young adults and
teenagers and I related to them by making
my main image be a teenaged artist. The
cost of publishing has increased due to
the recession and advertisements
decreasing. The advertisements
contributes to the profit made by the
magazine and if the profits decreases their
would be less money to spend on
publishing, so in order to beat the
recession I made the price of my magazine
£4 every month to receive an expected
profit. The masthead is large so it is visible
and would be easier to attract the
audience and the cover line is also quite
visible but smaller than the masthead
which also attracts the audience due to
the visibility.

Here are the 3 original photographs I
shot for the project……

I modified each photograph; here is
the original next to the final version:
• Raw 1 • Final 1

• I used photoshop to flip the image so there
could be more room for the cover line to sit
next to the rappers body. I also used brightness
to make the picture become even lighter so
you could see the features of the rappers face

And the second one:

• The image of the two artists were not taken
with an appropriate camera so the quality was
low so I was not able to use this as a main
image.

And the third one:

• This was another image which I took which I
thought was relative to my genre, however it
was not taken by an appropriate camera so it
was not eligible to be my main image.

Here are a couple of research models for
my contents page…

This is my contents page
• Contents Page
• These are key features…
The title, features,
reviews, images, folios
and cover stories are all
key features of the
contents page which I
used.

How does the contents page link back to
the cover page?
• I used the “impact” font on both the contents
page and cover page alongside using the logo
of the magazine on the contents page to keep
the corporate identity recognised by the
reader. The colours I used are quite similar
too: red, grey and black so the pages are
linked

Key points of contents page
• I have made the reader want to read on by including folios to each story so they
could easily find the page the article is on if they like the story.
• The cover stories either sits on the image or sits beneath the main image in a box.
The story would also include phrases which are relative to the image by talking
about who is in the image.
• The dominant stories would be associated with an image. The first thing the
reader would see is the images and they would know that because the stories
have images, there is more information to gather.
• The main image sits at the top left of the page with a cover story sitting on it,
whereas the two supporting images are place on the right hand side of the page
with the cover stories sitting beneath it. The features which are on the bottom left
of the page follow in numerical order underneath the features title. They have no
images as the stories are seen as less important. The reviews consists of a small
cover story to show that it is slightly more important than the features.

How does the contents page flag up your
double page spread?
• My contents page flags up the double page
spread by including the story “UNORTHODOX”
on the features list. The folio number “18” is
also found on the bottom left of the Double
page spread first page.

Here’s an example of an inspiring double
page spread…

This is why I think that double spread
works
• The main image on the Double page spread is
on the first page and utilizes the whole page.
This means that there is more information on
the second page of the spread. The image is
large so it will bring more attraction to
readers.
• The pull-out is sitting in a position where it
could be seen as the subheading so it could be
seen as challenging conventions of a double
page spread as it not sitting on the first page
as many pull-out quotes would

This is how my double page spread works
• The folio links back to the contents page as the features includes the story
“UNORTHODOX” and the page number 18. The page number 18 is
included In the DPS and the artist and story on the front cover page is
based on the story on the DPS.
• The main image of the rapper sits on the first page so that the reader
could feel automatically drawn to the image as it consumes the whole
page.
• The second page includes an article of an interview between the rapper
and the writer of the article. The main image sits on the first page so there
I could insert more text on the second page.
• The subheading is the pull-out quote which is part of the article itself. I
done this to challenge the conventions of a double-spread as usually the
pull-out sits on the first page of the spread.

This is how all three components are
linked together….

This is my re-drafted cover page
I received constructive criticism from
• Cover Page people telling me that the front cover
page resembled the grime sub-genre but
hip-hop itself due to the clothing of the
rapper (adidas). However, due to big
name artists such as Missy Elliott
sporting the same brand, I decided to
keep the photo as my main image but
making the selling-line state “THE UK’S
MOST DIVERSE HIP-HOP MAGAZINE”
showing that magazine focuses on the
UK hip-hop scene.

This is my re-drafted contents page

• Cover Page The main colour I was
aiming to use was grey,
but this was not possible
as the colour looked too
plain and almost whote-
looking.

This is my re-drafted double spread

• Double spread

Evaluation
• You can find my blog here: marcuskt.blogspot.com

(URL)
And
You can find my evaluation with responses to the 7 questions
here:
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?
blogID=8913079699042940478#editor/target=post;postID=80
43399508523232506
(URL)

As research planning_updated_2011-201

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