Week 12

  1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? From researching professional products I’ve used other Rap magazines to guide me when creating the cover to the magazine. I’ve developed the real media products so I could make my magazine stand out and look very professional. I researched a lot about Rap magazine’s like who is the publishers, what type of Rap magazines are there and many other stuff. I made use of the research I got by using ‘XXL’ magazine to help guide me when I was creating the cover. Also I have built-in the representations of Butler J’s theory that being male/female is biological but being masculine/feminine is sociological. Within the magazine I have proved this gender stereotype going along with one of the conventions of a ‘Rap’ magazine which I’m using a male Rap artist on the front cover. The image I took of the Rap artist I made the male look directly into the camera so he could look like he was in control, confident and dominant. I challenged the conventions so my product could be more appealing to my male target audience and I adjusted some of the conventions to make my product better by some of the features I included from the ideas I got from the other magazine I researched.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? After producing my first draft of my ‘Rap’ music magazine I’ve learnt from producing the magazines that technologies play a big part in constructing the product. Before using the software I watched a couple of Youtube clips so I can understand how they work and how the tools work. Using Photoshop and InDesign was good software’s to use because they have a whole wide range of tools that can be used like the ‘Lasso tool, Magic Ward, Gradient & other tools’ these tools are very handy on Photoshop when you are creating your image for the cover of the magazine when you are making changes to your image like altering the background colour it’s good to use the ‘Lasso tool’ to go around the image and change the rest of the background. InDesign tools like the ‘Type tool’ allow me to write over the image I have placed onto the document in InDesign so I can put in the inserts of the magazine. The only limitation of InDesign is that the fonts are limited so a font you may way to use may not be available because they don’t have it on the software.  

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

From the preliminary task to the music magazine task, I have improved on picking what fonts and colour schemes to use for the magazine so the magazine doesn’t look to childish or isn’t mixed up with too many colours. In my preliminary task I used a childish font but I changed that for the music magazine so it could be more mature. Using InDesign more thoroughly for example using more effects that can transform the magazine more and make it look more like a magazine that could be sold on the market.