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.