Friday, 30 March 2012

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

In order to select the appropriate institution to distribute my media product, I chose to do some research to find the best company for my magazine.

IPC MEDIA- http://www.ipcmedia.com/ 
IPC Media produces over 60 iconic media brand with their print reaching almost two thirds of UK woman and 42% of UK men which is almost 27million UK Adults. IPC offers something for everyone but they have a focus on three core audiences; me, mass market women and upmarket women.  Their portfolio includes;

Mens- comprises a wealth or leisure brands including Country Life and Rugby World as well as lifestyle brands including Nuts and NME.


Mass market women- famous women's weeklies including Look, Now and Chat; TV entertainment brands including TV Times.

Upmarket women's Division- luxury fashion brands including Marie Claire and home interest brands including Ideal Home.


It is clear to see that due to the amount of recognisable brands IPC distributes for, it is a successful business.
My magazine is much similar to NME which comes under the Men's category. However, the magazines in both women's categories are within the fashion, reality and TV magazines with no music magazines for women. As there are no female music magazines within this institution, I'm not sure how successful my magazine may be as there are no other success stories of the same genre within this institution. Although, contrasting this, my magazine would be the first female music magazine in this institution which could create a popular audience as it is something new they've not distributed before.

Bauer Media- http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/
Bauer Media is a multi-platform UK-based media Group consisting of many companies collected around two main divisions – Magazines and Radio.  Bauer Media is built on influential media brands with millions of personal relationships with engaged readers and listeners. their strategy is to connect audiences with good content and the wide portfolio of influential brands gives them an advantages over pure play magazines or radio competitors.

I think Bauer would be the perfect institution to distribute my magazine as it emphasises it's importance with creating a personal relationship with it's readers. Throughout my magazine, i have tried to use language which is personable and informal as a way of trying to connect with the audience of my magazine as a way of making them feel like they belong to a group.

Tuesday, 27 March 2012

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS


My magazine is that of a pop/rock genre with artist influences such as Coldplay, The Streets, Ed Sheeran, Lily Allen and The Kooks. This creates a hybrid genre as I have combined two very popular and mainstream genres as a way of hopefully boosting the success of the magazine.  I collected images of the typical audience members of my magazine. These characters best suited the "festival look" which comprised of pretty summer dresses teamed with grungy looking biker boots or slogan tees and ripped shorts.

 


When thinking of my target audience, I also began to think of how i can represented this social group through the use of images and colour schemes. The colour scheme for my magazine is red, white and blue representing the "Best of British Issue" I've created. Connotations of these colours include; 
  • White- purity and innocence. This contrasts the rockiness of the magazine yet also compliments the pop aspect. 
  •  Red- love, passion, boldness. These connotations can be associated to the rock side of my magazine.
  • Blue- security, peace, relaxing. This can be shown through both genres of my mag zine as well as linking with McQuail, Blumer and Brown's theory of Diversion-  the audience escaping their everyday life to relax and enjoy the magazine.
Throughout my magazine, I used specific sociolect language which would engage my audience such as using phrases like "dead good" within my interview with Lola and having a fun quickfire round of random questions. This type of mode of address adds a sense of informality to my magazine creating an appropriate level of interaction with the target audience and social group of pop/rock audiences as well as creating a bond between the audience.


When creating my front cover in particular, I wanted to create a character which would appeal to the target audience of my magazine. To do this,  I carefully thought of the mise-en- scene of the image so that it would reflect the genre of my magazine. The cover image of my cover artist is in black and white. She's wearing a black coat which I added red roses to replacing the mundane buttons which were originally on the coat. The inspiration behind this idea was rock band Guns N Roses logo shown below;
However, the red rose can have contrasting connotations. Red roses could mean love and girlyness within the pop aspect of my magazine but also show a harshness and boldness within the rocky aspect of the genre.



Tuesday, 20 March 2012

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

As a way of identifying how successful my magazine is regarding codes and conventions, I've analysed a cover from a magazine of a similar genre, Q magazine and compared it to my own front cover to determine the likeness between them both. In order to identify the codes and conventions, I've labelled them and added a description of why they are used and the effect that it had on the audience.
When designing my magazine I took into account the different conventions used in actual magazines to create realism throughout the product. To do this, I included stereotypical codes and conventions of a music magazine including; a masthead, luring techniques, bar codes/price/issue number and an interesting and engaging cover shot. Also in the Contents and double page spread pages, I used typical magazine conventions such as using columns within the text to give the magazine an authentic feel to it.  As well as using a traditional Heading within the article, an enlarged quote from the artist was used as this is often the case within real magazines and i wanted to replicate their success.
On the double page spread, I also included the slogan from my magazine along with the page number as this is a main convention which occurs on all magazine pages.  

Also used on the double page spread, was the technique of ordering text into columns as this is what occurs in most music magazines.