In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My school magazine uses many different types of media products, as I had to carry out a lot of research before I began designing my final piece. I had to research many different types of school magazines to be able to identify what and how the main codes and conventions used on the different layouts. By carrying out this research it enabled me to get different ideas of how to design my final piece and what to include on the front cover and contents page.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
As my task was to create a school magazine, my media product only really represents the social groups that attend or are involved in the education society. My magazine represents the school well as it includes a lot of information and images that happen around the sports department of the school so therefore would attract social groups from other local schools that are interesting in finding out what happens elsewhere in the borough.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The type of media institution that is more likely to distribute my media product would be the school itself, Trinity School Church Of England. This would be the perfect media institution to distribute my media magazine as it would help to promote the different sports in the school.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for my magazine would be school children aged 11-19, as it is a school magazine, also parents of the children that attend the school may wish to have a look at my magazine too which it would also be suitable for them. The main purpose of my magazine is to let pupils know about the success around the school in the PE and Sports area, therefore my magazine is more for the sporty children and for the pupils that enjoy playing sports within the school.
How did you attract/address your audience?
I used many different ways to address my audience; I used a bight background which was a light blue and a bold darker blue main heading. I chose to use these colours as they are the colour of Trinity School, which would have meant the magazine was more suited for the school. I have used a lot of different photos of a range of sports that had been played throughout the last few weeks while I had been creating my final product as it would mean that the information that I had included would have more meanings for the pupils that read the magazine. Also by using a range of different images rather than lots of text would help keep the reader’s attention for longer period of time. I used a banner on my front page as I made this issue a special Christmas edition. I included this as it would also help attract the audience’s attention more as the majority of children look forward to Christmas. Overall I made sure that my magazine included a range of bright colours with boarders around my images which helped make them stand out, and used a lot of bright eye-catching colours.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout completeing the Prelim task I have learnt many different skills in many different programmes. I created my magazine in Adobe InDesign CS6, which I had never used before. I learnt how important it is to create and stick to the different layers as it helped me to edit it as I went through. I also used photoshop quite a lot to edit some of my photos and to delete some of the white backgrounds from behind my images, this was important to learn to give the magazine a more professional finish towards the end.
By completing this prelim task I have learnt many different skills that I will need in future for when I start my main task. The research I undertook gave me an understanding of many different things that I needed to include to be able to get a higer mark and helped expand my knowledge in media as I had never learnt any media words before as I am new to the subject. I am therefore going to include the knowledge I have learnt in this prelim task in my final task I am due to compete in the upcoming months.
