Media Studies: March 2013

Friday, 22 March 2013

Thursday, 21 March 2013

Evaluation (#2)

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The print media industry uses stereotypes in order to plan and design their magazine to suit the needs of the readers. However stereotypes usually do come along within the actual band/artist themselves. For many people music and media is a form of identity and defines who they are as a person, what there likes and dislikes are, and quite commonly without even realising it, many people can fall in to a particular stereotype.

For example:

Justin Beiber, quite commonly Justin Beiber is described as the new teenage heart throb. And this is not surprising; the reason for this is that he became an established pop artist when he was just fourteen. He is especially popular young girls mainly ages 7-18 and this is because of his age, looks and popular music. This makes him a key icon in many pop music magazines. It is clear from this copy of Top of the Pops magazine that he is commonly associated with the ‘pop girl’/’pop princess’ stereotype, because of his ‘cheeky’ pose and the bright pink colours based around him.

However…

A group such as Foals are more likely to appear in a magazine such as NME, this is because of their grungy and darker look. NME is a weekly music magazine that has a specific niche and genre of music, just as Top of the Pops does. In order to covey this indie/rock genre, the artists and the magazine must appear a certain way and this again falls into the stereotypes of the music industry.

The main question in which I intend to answer is; how does your media product represent particular social groups? And I think it is clear that my pop magazine appeals to young girls ages 7-14 and therefore would have to portray a strong role model to the younger generation. I think it is important that the bands and artists chosen on a pop magazine do not portray an explicit image or a negative image so not to be inappropriate for the younger generation.

In order to appeal to the pop music social group I have had to design my magazine around that stereotype. When I think of the pop music style I assume the colours to be used are light (pinks, greens, blues, whites etc.) and that the font used is very rounded and bubbly. For example;

(http://www.fontspace.com/)

These two fonts are rounded, think and bold and are showing a feminine apearence also. Although it is nessiserry to steryotype, a media publisher has to ba careful not to be too asuming. It is one thing to find the genre of your target audience however it is another to be too powerful within an assumption.

The font I chose I received from dafont.com however in order to make it my own I also edited it by overlapping the letters and adding colour. This is what the origional font looked like:

And this is what my mathead looked like once I had finished:

As you can see from the images above I have clearly edited the images size, colour and style. I think this makes my masthead look a lot more astetically pleasing as it is brighter and more vibrant and this definatly makes my magazine apeal to a younger famale target audience.

Wednesday, 20 March 2013

Questionaire

These where my responses:

Evaluation (#3)

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The media institution that I chose to represent my Cheri Magazine label would be BBC publications. Not only because they represent Top of the Pops magazine, but also because they have a legal contract to their readers to inform, educate and entertain which is perfect for my target audience. The factor of globalization is also clear as the BBC work worldwide, promoting their brand and building up connections. This can only mean good things for Cheri as with globalization opportunities comes greater success and therefore more profits worldwide.

Because Cheri magazine would be a new and upcoming magazine, we would need a publishing company who has good contacts and has been running for a long time, therefore BBC Magazines is perfect because their brand is extremely well established within the media industry.

However once I have fully researched the BBC Magazines company I have found that in fact many of the magazines published have extremely strong links towards TV shows released on BBC television. Therefore my company would have to be a conglomerate, however this is not particularly a bad thing because if it was to expand to a Cheri music channel for example, this would defiantly draw in more profits for the magazine. Just as Top of the Pops has done before.

There are many important things to consider when choosing a magazine publisher;

Why should they be your publisher?

I believe that the BBC publications should be my publisher as they already have extremely beneficial information on the pop industry and its print media (for example top of the pops) and without this expertise a new and upcoming product such as Cheri may collapse almost instantly.

What benefits can you get from them being your publisher?

The benefits Cheri will receive from the joint partnership with BBC magazines is globalization and conglomerate opportunities. These are all extremely good as they don’t only expand the business but also the profits.

How will this affect business and sales?

BBC have a well known reputation of expanding sales. Because of this strong and concrete reputation the sales will increase as the trust barrier is made stronger between, Cheri – Publisher – Distributor – Store owner. I am confident that whilst working with the BBC Cheri’s reputation and sales with increase dramatically.

Evaluation (#1)

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

There are many conventions that media products stick to in order to appeal to their target audience and fit in with the media guidelines. This is quite simple within the print media industry because it can sometimes mean something as simple as a layout or a font or even a colour scheme. It is important that these conventions are kept in order to appeal to the audience. To prove my points more dramatically, you can see that I have compared my magazine with a top of the pops one; this will help me show what conventions I have kept and what conventions I have changed slightly.