Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Audience Research(Preliminary)
Adult Questionnaire
1. Q: What kind of colour scheme would you like?
A: Clear and consistent colours.
A: Nice bright colours
A: School colours
2. Q: What kind of articles would you like?
A: What’s happening in the community, around Corby, not only stuff that’s directly relevant to the school
A: Articles about reading, to try get students to read. Current events about what each department is doing.
A: Student success stories
3. Q: Would you want a front page or articles on the front
A: A front page should only show snippets of the articles that are on the inside of the magazine
4. Q: Anything specific you think should be reported on?
A: The school council, GCSE results
5. Q: Student writers of articles or adults?
A: mix of both, but student articles would be better as it shows what the students of the school can do
A: Student articles. Involves them more and can make others more likely to read it
A: Articles written by students
6. Q: Formal or informal
A: Written Standard English, but not too formal so the students don’t get scared away/bored.
A: Mostly formal, but maybe split it up into sections with different language types for different year groups
7. Q:What images should be in it
A: No celeb culture
8. Q: Should the front cover look very professional or more informal, to show it as a student magazine
A: More professional looking makes it looks smarter, which also reflects on how the school puts itself across. However you don’t want to intimidate readers
9. Q: What general content should take up the magazine
A: Student work should be shown off. Also current affairs around the world, but only certain story’s that aren’t too much
A: Writing competitions or various other completions that can be judged by members of staff
Student questionnaire
Q: What kind of colour scheme would you like?
A: Colder colours, like blue and green tend to work better and look more professional. Keep consistency but do change it up a little
A: Bright and colourful
Q: What kind of articles would you like?
A: Student work
Q: Would you want a front page or articles on the front
A: Students should be on the front page, as parents would also want this
Q: Anything specific you think should be reported on?
Q: Student writers of articles or adults?
A: Students, makes it more personal
Q: Formal or informal
A: Quite gossipy, not too formal
Q: What images should be in it
Q: Should the front cover look very professional or more informal, to show it as a student magazine
Q: What general content should take up the magazine
Wednesday, 4 November 2015
Passive and Active Media
Passive media
Books
Certain advertising
Older TV programs
Soaps
Active media
Newspapers
Facebook
Magazines
Technology and consumer interaction is growing and developing exponentially. This has been the cause of huge changes in Media over the past 10 years. This is turning traditional passive consumers into more active consumers.
Active texts are now much more common, especially in TV. Most popular programs now have some form of interactivity with the viewership. Programs such as Big Brother, Britons Got Talent and X factor. Also news stations such as sky or fox. All these programs will get you to get involved by either downloading their app, texting in or tweeting them.
Blumer and Katz theories on why we consume texts-
- To relate to it(Personal identity)
- To be entertained/diverted from the real word
- To talk to others about it
- To be informed/educated/surveillance
- To feel better about yourself
Diversion is important in media. It lets us consume text/general media and makes us distracted/diverted from reality and the real world. Escapism.
Personality identity is how the reader relate and aspire to be like those they read about. Fans of music will generally dress like those artists they listen to and try be like them. This is personal identity. Fans aspire to be like the cover starts. The way they dress is generally the most popular way fans aspire/personally identify with the cover stars. Difference between aspiration and fantasy. Not all fans aspire, many just fantasize as their artists way of life are generally very out of their comfort zone.
Genre Breakdown
Music Magazine Genres
Hip-hop
Hip-hop is more then music. Hip-hop is a culture. This means hip-hop magazines have the potential to be very successful as there is always something to write about, and lots of different roads you can go down as the idea of ‘Hip-hop’ is so huge and versatile. Two different magazines which both call themselves hip-hop magazines may cover two complete different sides of the genre, as the genre is filled and filled with sub-genres. This allows for a huge range of content and flavor within the magazines.
The target audience of my version of a hip-hop magazine is as follows-
Age:18-25
Race: White
Gender: Male
Hobbies: Frequent internet user, very interested in music. Keeps up with current affairs/pop culture
My magazine is tailored to a specific type of hip-hop fan. This type of fan are quite niche, they are people that are heavily interested in music, and will generally play an instrument of their own. They would also be interested in very many different types of genre, from electronic to rock and of course, Hip-hop.
Pros:
- Lots of potential content
- Upcoming artists are easy to find thanks to Soundcloud/twitter, meaning there can be many ‘jumps’ on popular artists before they get big
- Always evolving, never gets stale
Cons:
- Aimed towards a Niche market, potentially small audience
- Market is big, lots of competition
EDM
EDM, Electrical dance music, has recently blew up. While it has always been a popular genre, it has more recently become even more mainstream. EDM covers almost hundreds of smaller sub genres, the most popular of which are Dance, Dubstep, House and Hardstyle. EDM’s strongest point is their festivals, which are the biggest in the world. However, there is a big gap in the market for EDM magazines. There are few EDM magazines, and even fewer popular/good ones. The reason for this is that EDM is such a general term and has so many sub genres, meaning it is impossible for a magazine to cover all EDM. There is potential for a leading EDM magazine, but it would be difficult and the content would have to be a strong mixture of a good handful of the more popular genres, allowing for a big audience
The target audience of my version of a EDM magazine is as follows-
Age:17-24
Race:White
Gender:Unisex
Hobbies: Very outgoing, frequently goes to parties/concerts.
Pros:
- Lots of potential variety of content due to many sub-genres
- Gap in the market for EDM magazines
- Genre is currently increasing in popularity rapidly
Cons:
- Can be hard to pull off the right mixture of sub-genres
- Very drug infused genre, can cause controversy
Preliminary Evaluation
Preliminary work reasoning, explanation and evaluation
I did two pieces of preliminary work. This was two pages of a school magazine, a front cover and a contents page to go with it. I first went through preparation steps before I even started the preliminary, so I knew what was needed. I did various things such as a questionnaire and a research to find out what a school magazine consisted of.
I conducted a questionnaire on a handful of students from different age groups, as well as a handful of teachers. I asked various questions, about the color scheme, who they would want to write the articles as well as what type of content they would be interested in. This questionnaire was helpful as it helped me know what I needed to put in my magazine, and what each audience were interested in. To improve this, I could have got a higher number of samples of students, as I had more adults then students.
As well as the questionnaire, I also conducted some research. I found a handful of example school magazines, and even deconstructed one. This was very helpful as It let me understand the key features of a school magazine. To improve on this I could have deconstructed a contents page of a school magazine, as I only did the front cover.
After all this, I started the front cover. I went around the school and took around 20 photos, so I had a good collection. I had a small idea of what photos I wanted, but I also just took photos of places around the school. I made the main image of my front cover one of the photos I took, this avoids all copyright problems as well as letting me be creative as it is my own photo. I made sure to follow the suggested color schemes, green, which is the schools colors. I think there are a few ways I could have improved with process. Firstly, I could have cropped the photo better. Secondly, I could have formatted it better, allowing me to fit more content on the front page.
My contents page also uses the same color scheme, as well as my own images I took myself. I made sure to change the text color, so it isn't just boring plain black text all the way through. I think my content page could have been improved by making it a little more interesting and spicing it up a little bit.
In the process of making these two preliminary tasks, I learnt valuable skills of knowing how to use pages well, as well as a little bit of photoshop. I learnt a lot of things through doing this preliminary, all of which will be very helpful to me once the real task comes along.
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