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In future I will try and use the skills I have shown today in both photoshop and indesign in other pieces of work for media but also in a potential future job in media. I will also try to improve by trying out different colour schemes and being more developmental with my background, typography, layout so more potential consumers will start the AIDA process whilst staying true to the conventions of my genre.
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In order to try and understand media magazines better, I used a software called indesign to try and replicate a professional magazine cover to the best of my ability. We learned to use indesign through a few lessons and then we were left to try and play around with indesign to make this mock cover page. We used this knowledge on how to use indesign with out knowledge on key features of magazine covers (such as the masthead, pugs and main cover lines) in order to try and get the most effective result that we could. The top image is my finished product and the bottom is the original that I replicated. During the process there were some things that I struggled with however I also think that there were plenty of things that I did well. In order to improve my skills for my future magazine cover, I’ll need to take into account what went well and what I could do better so the outcome for it is better. Some things that I believe went well are:
For the things I need to improve upon, there is:
I have also looked up some videos on indesign usage to help me in future when it comes to creating my magazine cover. These videos cover sme of the things that I ended up struggling with in my mock cover.
In future, I will use the lessons I learned when creating my mock image, annotating a magazine cover and the videos embedded above in order to try and create my music magazine to the best of my ability and try to match a professional standard in my work. For example, when creating my media magazine I will be careful when using images and text together as they can have a powerful effect together and when poorly designed (e.g pink text on a pink background) it can ruin an audience members emmersion in your product as well as coming across as very cheaply done. I will also try to use these lessons beyond my A-levels and try to apply them to both my everyday life to see how media is evolving and in a potential future job, to make sure that my work meets the expectations of both my colleagues and those who will consume the media that I produce.
on Here we have a cover of billboard magazine with Alicia Keys. Next to it I have annotated some of the key features to analyse and research what kind of people would be interested in this magazine. This was in order to get a better understanding of audience demographics and psychographics and what technical design conventions can suggest about the target audience. For example I came to the conclusion that the primary demographic of billboard magazine were women in their 20’s. In future I will think about how to research my audience when creating my music magazines cover in order to get a better understanding of who they are and what they are interested in.
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Every magazine has a cover of some kind. It’s best to have an eye catching one to immediatly engage and interest the audience. There are several elements that go into a good magazine cover, such as the main cover star, masthead and the main cover line. These elements can have the same denotations, however their connotations can make them more appealing to their demographic. For example, the main cover line can help potentially unaware audience members understand the main cover star whilst also attracting the main cover stars fans to the magazine. The text of the main cover line can further add to the appeal of the magazine to its target demographic. To understand these different elements that go into a cover of a magazine, we annotated one ourselves to pinpoint some of these key features.
Here we’ve got a cover from MusicWeek featuring Dua Lipa as the main cover star. This cover is very interesting as it refuses many technical design conventions as it doesn’t contain any pug’s, plugs or insets. This helps the audience focus on the main attraction of this edition of the magazine, being Dua Lipa. This is further shown by how the main cover line is larger than the masthead, which also isn’t a very common thing to happen. In future I will think about these features when creating my own magazine cover to make it as eye catching and effective as possible for my target audience.
on Media Hashtags by Andrew Guille
Anytime you take a picture, the camera talks and tells you a narrative of what’s going on. Using things such as, camera angle, proxemics, actions, facial expressions, etc you can tell a narrative without using words. We took these pictures in order to get a better understanding of how narratives can be formed through images by using these camera techniques, mise-en-scene, proxemics, facial expressions and body language as when they’re used together they have a powerful relationship in making a scene with powerful denotations and connotations. In future I will think about how to use these camera techniques can be applied to other works such as my music video or music magazine to represent a certain genre.
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To further understand how mise-en-scene can communicate meaning in an image, I made a moodboard of conventions in a genre of music. The genre I chose was folk. Some of these conventions include acoustic / string instruments, the outdoors and small, local concerts. This has helped me understand the folk music genre more than before and has also helped me to think about what key iconography can be linked to certain genres so even if the denotations are the same, the connotations can be completely different.
Here is an image of my folk costume with some sticky notes attached to me. These notes were written by other people and describe what they thought of my genre in one word. This was to gain a better understanding of other peoples views on the same genre of music as everyone is bound to have different opinions to one another. For example, whilst some saw my costume as natural and organic, others saw me as odd and quirky, which is completely understandable.
This is my chosen image out of the many we took. Here you can see my constume that is meant to represent the folk genre. I tried to get a rural, natural vibe going on with the sheepskin waistcoat and the straw hat as that’s what is commonly associated with the genre. My pose has a sort of prideful, happy look which I find fairly fitting as folk music seems like it’s fairly relaxed but also has a passionate community for the music. This photoshoot has made me think about how mise-en-scene can effect what the audience thinks about a product and how you can convey that message to the audience.
In future I will use all of the insight gained today in order to try and achieve a better representation of genre when it comes to mise-en-scene so I can convey to my audience exactly what they are looking for in a magazine for a certain genre. I will also research my target audiences tastes and expectations before coming to a conclusion based on my own presumptions about certain genres, so audiences can feel happier with the final product that I produce.
on Every media has certain denotations and connotations. The denotation is the image and the connotation is the idea behind it, telling us what it’s meant to signify and / or represent. To decode the connotations you must deconstruct the denotations.
To further my understanding of this I decided to deconstruct and analyse a tour poster from KES the band. Here I thought about things such as the artstyle, text, setting, positioning, etc in order to determine what this poster was aiming to achieve. I came up with the conclusion that the poster is trying to convey a chilled out, comical narrative.
In future I will try to reflect on how all of the denotations and connotations can portray a narrative in any media form and can help an audience understand your media work at a single glance.
on Media Ecology refers to the several aspects of media that interlink together to create the media we see from day to day. There are several aspects to this eco-system, some of these include:
All of these aspects need each other to work properly and the media would fail if any of these aspects failed. For example, the distributors need the creators in order to distribute their work and the creators need the distributors in order to have their work seen by a wider audience. Then this media will have a wider influence over people and can have some effect on their understanding, beliefs, perception & values.
This has made me think about what I will need in the future in order to fund, create and distribute my media and how each aspect has equal importance.
on Everybody has a media diet of some kind. It may contain a wide variety of media forms or only one or two however it will always be present.
I’ve put mine onto a pictoral collage where a pictures size is how much I like / use it. I have annotated each of the images to show what they relate to regarding to Blumler and Katz theory of media and how everyone uses different media forms for different purposes. These can be seperated into four main catagories being:
This has made me put into perspective how I use media on a day to day basis in terms of what I enjoy and what I use most often, mainly being social media such as YouTube and TikTok, especially on social media I am a prosumer rather than a consumer. This has also made me think about what I use media for as I mainly use media for Entertainment purposes but I don’t tend to use it to reinforce my Personal Identity.
In future I may need to think about how I use media and that I should try using more media platforms for different purposes such as reinforcing my Personal Identity or for Education & Information. I should also think about how this could effect things like my music magazines production and how it could be marketed to different people by taking advantage of those more popular media platforms.