Rory's AS Media Blog

Tuesday, 12 April 2016

Q7- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Personally i feel that we have come a long way in terms of the quality of our work. I feel that it fulfilled the needs of a school magazine. For example , the masthead of our work doesn't look very easy on the eye due to the colours and the font used. Also we have left the bottom of the page quite plain which could lead people to think our work is unfinished. Comparing this to our music magazine we have improved dramatically. It is clear to see that i have developed my skills and produced a much higher quality magazine. for example the masthead we used in our music magazine stood out much because we have used given more consideration into the colours used so that our work came across as more appealing.

We went with a bold typography so that it was clear that this was our masthead. When it came round to the colours used we went with very plain colours. I felt that using the black background colour work much better in the black for the genre of music we have chosen to base our work on which is hip hop. also i feel that the black colour also fades the main image into background and gives it a more natural feel. Furthermore i feel that our music magazine has come along way in the range of softwares and developing skills i used to produce my final piece. This has helped me produce my work to a higher quality in the fact that i was able to use Adobe Photoshop to refine my images and make sure that there were no areas of the photos which were not up the scratch and would bring the quality of the work down. This combined with our attention to detail has resulted in our work have no mess ups.

Thursday, 24 March 2016

Q4- Who Would Be The Audience for Your Media Product ?

Wednesday, 23 March 2016

Q3- What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Magazine and Why ?

Evaluation question 3 from Rory Taplin

Q2.How does your music magazine represent particular social groups?

Q1- In what way does your Music Magazine Use, develop or challenge forms and conventional of real music magazines?

In what way does your Music Magazine Use, develop or challenge forms and conventional of real music magazines?

Throughout our magazine , we have considered the conventions used in a number of modern music magazines of this genre today. We have used other music magazines as inspiration and assessed what aspects of a music magazine makes them attractive to a specific audience.

Our intentions behind our front cover was to be stylish and eye-catching and was a key aspect of genre and audience. We find it crucial that we adapt the right style when working with a hip hop magazine as if we get it wrong it would most defiantly stop people reading our content. We have done extensive research throughout our work which can be found in our readership profile and our mood board. The front cover is the first thing that the audience are greeted by so it is so important that we make it as attractive as possible. so first thing we had to establish was the colours we wanted to use in our front cover. at first we tried some brighter colours to see what they looked like , but after we underwent some research we discovered though magazines like Fader they like to stick to very plain and simple colours. this is the reason why after being more educated on what i am needing to do to conform for the typical aspects of a hip hop music magazine. Only after doing this did i realised that it would be affective for me to go with the black and white colour scheme. Our main inspiration we took for our work was from a specific issue of Fader as shown at the top of the page. What we liked about this specific issue was the simple layout and the colours used. in the issue they have chosen to challenge the typical layout of a hip hop magazine, they have chosen to go with a very simple layout only including essential information and chosen to make two thing main thing to focus on. The first bring the mast head which is the name of the magazine so that people what magazine it is. And secondly they have made it clear that they wont you to focus on the model on the front page in this case being grime artist Skepta. We thought this would suit what were trying to achieve with our work and for that reason this is what we based the basics of our work on. But they we also added some small features to grip our audience to reading into our work like a little teaser with a rhetorical at the bottom of the page. The next aspect we have used to conform to the typical hip hop magazine ascetic was with the model we used on the front cover. We found that in hip hop magazines it is common to have close up photo of a specific artist and that be the main focus of the page. so we have adopted this method to conform to the stereotype though the use of RyBoy Digital as our main focus on the front cover. We have used the character Ryboy Digital because he resembles a typical hip hop artist that our audience can relate to and makes it clear that we are understanding the task clearly and what our music magazine will need to feature to have at real feel to it

Monday, 21 March 2016

Final Designs

Front Cover

Contents Page

Double Page Spread

Double Page Mock Up 3

Double Page Spread Mock up 3

This was the closest mock up to making it to being our final double page spread. This mock up covered all of the criteria we were after, by this i mean we have used the colour scheme that is running throughout the magazine. Also i feel that this is a much more attractive layout with the big mast head of "Ryboy Digital" edited above the image on the first page making it clear that this is the name of the artist in the photo. But when compared to the one we used I feel that it just has the edge over this one and for that reason we have chosen to go with the other one.

Double Page Spread 2

Double Page Spread Mock Up 2

This mock up is a bit more of a development towards what we are after with our magazine double page spread. This mock up conforms to the colour scheme we were looking for which is a blend of black and white. but i feel that the layout of this double page spread is unattractive and we have not taken the time to refine all the small details to make it a high enough quality for our final piece.

Double Page Spread Mock Up 1

This is the first mock up we produced of a double page spread and personally i feel that this was a good solid place to start. The layout in this mock up is very generic and nothing fancy but the simplicity of it allows it not to get carried away and look unattractive. But what was letting this double page spread down was the colours used and the content, yet again this double page spread has not conformed to the colour scheme we were looking to archive with our work. We chose to go with a grey theme on this double page spread but i think this makes it look quite boring seeing that this is not reoccurring throughout the rest of the work. the other aspect that let this work down was the content we used in the second page, we decided to write up an interview with one of the artists featuring in our magazine. Reflecting on what we did i feel that we went out the layout of this work in complete wrong way and would leave our audience confused to what it is saying.

Contents Page Mock Up 3

This contents page was very close to what we were looking for, it ticks all the boxes in terms of the colour scheme and the layout. The background is predominantly black which sticks to the same as the front cover, also has subtle features of white. Also in my opinion this is a much more attractive layout with the first thing the audience is being greeted is the main image of an artist.

Contents Page Mock Up 2

This is the second contents page we produced but ended up not going with. Personally i feel that this contents page was where we started to develop a bit more of a contents page layout and started to conform to the colour scheme i wanted to achieve. But i still fell like it looks like its missing features and look unfinished. We wanted to keep our work simple but i feel that this wasn't the best layout to portray that simple affect we were after.

Contents Page Mock Up 1

Contents Page Mock up 1

This is the First mock up we produced for our contents page, We didn't go with this Contents page design for our final piece for a number of reasons. The first problem i have with this is the colours used, in our front cover we have stuck to the majority of the page being black. therefore seeing that i chose to stick with a colour scheme running throughout all of our work this colour does not have a place in my final work. The second problem i have with this is the font we have used for the text on this contents page. Personally when looking back at it i don't find it the easiest text to read which could lead to problems if we used this font in our final piece.

Front Cover Mock Up 3

This is our Final mock up that we felt wasn't a high enough quality to feature in our final work. The aspects that let this work down was the layout, we felt that this was a very low quality layout and not one that would find on a magazine front cover. On this work looking back at it i felt that the mast head was not in proportion to the main photo and didn't stand out enough to make it apparent this is the name of the magazine. The colour scheme we went this also doesn't look very attractive and washes out the three circles with information on the bottom.

Front Page Mock Up 2

This magazine front cover didn't make the cut because we felt that it is a little over the top. the background of this magazine is an array of different colours, we thought we would try this affect to see how it looked. But after making it we have seen that it is over the top and no what we are after for this task. Also we have left this magazine rather clear of many features on the front page, we have done this on our final piece but on this example i feel like it looks like something is missing.

Front Cover Mock Up 1

We felt this mock up was not a good enough standard for the final piece and here is why. The colours used in this front cover resembled our Preliminary task. We felt that we were much more capable of producing a better colour scheme as we feel that these colours didn't come across very professional and made it look like something someone whipped up without putting much thought into it.