Evaluation.

1. Evaluation. I have produced a music magazine called “What the folk?” aimed at teenage (thirteen to twenty-one year olds) who are lovers of folk music.

2. Who would be the audience for your media product? My intended audience is that of thirteen to twenty-one year olds who are fans of the folk music genre. I have chosen this age group as there is a lack of Folk fans of this age group due to the sterotypes of Folk being for an older generation. By making my magazine seem rebelious, much like a teen who are my target audience then that may attract them to my product.I portrayed this intention through my title “What the Folk?” due to the fact that the word folk sounds a much a swear word. I know that my audience likes this due to the fact that my target audience chose this title through my questionnaire research from question 9 asking 20 of my target audience to circle one of 5 listed name ideas for a magazine about folk.

3. How do you attract/address your audience? My magazine uses graphics suggesting free iTunes downloads in order to catch the reader’s eyes on the page as by seeing something free it makes the reader think that they're gaining something extra for the price they paid. Another thing I did to attract my audience was to use attractive images. My target audience, through my original research (see questionnaire), on question 7, when asked which magazine they preferred the majority circled the magazine blender, which has the artist Fergie half naked on the front. To put a nude or revealing photo on the front of a folk magazine would completely go against the forms and conventions of a folk magazine it would attract a lot of male, and some female attention. However, this sort of image would be inappropriate for my age range, as they are still maturing. Instead I opted for an image of an attractive model, who is wearing clothes but would still drawn in readers due to her good looks, making them want to read the article about her to find out more about her. A third thing I did to attract my target audience is the name itself of my magazine. My magazine is named “What the Folk?” as many of the folk music magazines on the market are serious in the context of the music genre and I opted for something which would be seen as “rebellious” to a youth (whom are of course my target audience) due to the fact that youth’s themselves are stereotypically portrayed as rebellious. By having a title which sounds like a piece of Taboo Lexis it also adds humour to my piece due to the fact it sounds rude but isn’t. this sort of humour would cause a laugh from the age of my target audience, and this can be seen from question 9 of my research questionnaire due to the fact that my target audience completed these questionnaires and upon feedback on the reasons why they chose that answer the majority of replies were – “because it was funny.” I also used large fonts throughout my piece – complete with a brand style of having a large first letter – this font I used was “Tahoma”, an easy and basic text that stands out clearly in the colour white which is the colour I chose to use. The size of the words would draw the readers attention as they would find it hard to not notice the writing. The words I chose to use within the piece was a vocabulary that my target audience will understand but also enjoy reading due to the fact that the amount of long and complex words are minimal if not none in this piece meaning m audience, most of which who are ether still in school or further education are still learning new words and phrases and by removing words they may not not know will allow them to read my piece without fear of not knowing a word/phrase(s). By having relevant articles to the subject, here being folk music, allows my piece to engage with the reader due to the fact it has items within the magazine that is relevant to the world of folk of which my target audience are fans of and will have some amount of knowledge. By conducted research on real life artists to write about for example, June Tabor, means that by having articles on artists that are relevant means my audience would want to read about them. The price of my music magazine, although not actually specified on my piece would be in the region of £2.01 - £2.99 due to the fact in my questionnaire conducted by my target audience only, they specified that they would buy a music magazine for this price so by pricing my magazine around that price area would cause my target audience to want to buy my magazine.

4. In what ways does your media product use, challenge or develop forms and conventions of a real media product? My media product challenges the conventions of stereotypical folk music magazines due to the fact that although I have tried to keep my piece close to the typical forms of a Folk music magazine I have opted to try and move away from the forms as well. This is due to the fact I want my 3 pieces to seem like the target audiences are reading the magazine and feel like they are rebelling which is what my target audience of teenagers often do. One can see this throughout my piece by using Taboo lexis and making the magazine’s name sound like a profanity will sound rebellious as it has such an informal name but also due to the fact that my target audience chose this name in my questionnaire which other names involved I thought up were more typical folk music magazine names. My media product does portray any real media product due to the fact that my 3 pieces have large mastheads with my front cover has a title that goes across the top of the page and being the largest masthead throughout my 3 pieces showing that my piece sticks -

5. -Conventions of real music magazines due to the fact that they too have large mastheads going across the top of the page. My 3 pieces are brimming with many different colours which is a form of challenging the the forms of Folk music magazine due to the fact that magazines like Irish music have one to three basic colours across the entire piece. Whereas, across my 3 pieces, colours are thoroughly seen throughout every page in order to attract my reader due to the fact that my target audience have said that they like lots of colours and images because my target audience are visual readers. By having a basic layout of my 3 pieces with everything laid out with its own place means my piece fits into the category of sticking with typical forms and conventions of a Folk music magazine due to the fact the folk music magazine, Irish music, an actual real media product dedicated to folk music has a basic layout which is easy to follow, something which I believe I have successfully emulated in my 3 pieces by having boxes and images all uniform sizes and the same space from each other across the page. My 3 pieces however, do differ from real media products of music magazines due to the fact that real media products such as Kerrang, Q or Irish music are to entertaining purposes, which I also believe my pieces do too. But my 3 pieces also come with messages to help my target audience due to the fact that they are teenagers and by providing them with messages such as, self harming and obsessive drinking is bad it allows my piece to engage with the reader directly using my characters as role models to eduacate as well as entertain, which challenges the role of a Music magazines aimed at young

6. Audiences. • The use of graphics such as “Free iTunes download” on my piece is a typical form of a media product due to the fact that it attempts to catch the reader’s eye not only by offering something to the reader because it is free and the subliminal idea of the human brain is that if something is free it must be worth getting but also, because it is in a large box and large writing of the text suggesting a free item which therefore connects directly to the reader. By using this shows my piece uses Fairclough’s model of advertising by using verbal and visual cues (here being the large graphic box and and large “free”) to evoke knowledge, behavior and lifestyle frames, in other words the behavior I want of the reader for when they see this box is to pick up the magazine and purchase it.

7. Front Evaluation Cover

8. The photograph I used for my front cover is similar with conventions of folk music magazines when compared with “Irish Music”, an actual folk music magazine. Firstly, when comparing my Image with that of what is used in Irish Music, both subjects of the images give direct mode of address (eye contact with the camera) in order to look directly at the reader. Both magazines do this for effect. Irish music uses to so to give the piece a form of direct address at the reader, which I also did whoever, I unlike Irish music used my model’s features in this case her eyes which are a beautiful blue colour which accompanied with a smile it gives the reader direct address but the emotions portrayed through these two features add friendlies and beauty which would entice a reader to pick up the magazine for want of that beauty. With my piece aimed at teenagers (thirteen to twenty-one year olds), by seeing the image of a beautiful girl on the front cover it attracts BOTH genders meaning my magazine has no specific gender target. It attracts males by the use of beauty and an element of lust. By placing an attractive girl in their own age range on the front cover of the magazine it will make them want to pick it up to stare at her and wish they had a girlfriend who looked like her and this would make them then want to go further and read the article about her. With girls, it makes them jealous in the sense of they want to look like her but in a level of admiration jealousy that they want to look like her so they will buy the magazine to see what she’s wearing or how her hair is and then try and -

9. Copy her style, or even her emotional and physical behaviors and can do this by purchasing my product and then reading her articles to find out more about her in order to copy her. This completely varies to Irish music’s model who has little or no beauty and when giving the camera direct mode of address, gives off different effects like the use of ugliness perhaps draws the reader’s attention due to the fact that this model is different looking to the convectional idea of a musician therefore there must be an interesting article about him and that would make someone want to pick up Irish music. My image also varies from Irish music in the sense that my model’s apparel purposefully links with the background whereas, Irish music’s model’s apparel purposefully contrasts with the background. The colour I chose of my model to wear was blue. The blue and white striped T shirt she is wearing gives off the emotions of relaxation and soothing. This links with my model’s actual story as she comes back from depression and self harm, showing she is now calm and recovered from. To emphasize this, my model has a blue background and also those beautiful blue eyes. Blue is also a very popular colour, as is red which is the colour of my model’s hair which brings up the earlier mentioned emotion of lust. By combining the two colours it gives off a sense that my model Is calm and clean but can be feisty and even dangerous when she wants to be, as danger is another emotion portrayed by the colour red. To link that further still with the white on the t shirt which is specifically chosen as white portrays purity and better still perfection, which is hard to see that when the other colours give off different emotions. When comparing my use of colours to Irish-

10. Music which has their model in white, which again shows the same idea as afore-mentioned idea of purity and perfection yet the character is completely different to the conventional ideas of what male perfection looks like. The model is then stood in front of a whole black background with no other colours on the page. Black is of course associated with power but also mystery, which adds to the model’s facial colour which Is red which could show he is an alcoholic but we aren’t sure of this. My piece is similar in the fact that both model’s backgrounds are mystery’s and this can be portrayed through the colours on the page, but the variation in my piece to that of Irish music is that of my piece uses many colours to give off many different ideas and assumptions, whereas, Irish music uses one maybe two ideas which forces the reader to read the article about the character rather than just read the front cover in order to understand them better but also to entice readers into reading my magazine in order to find out about those characters. I went for a similar masthead to that of Irish music, a flat, easy to read, horizontal masthead across the top of the page so it doesn’t take up too much space of my image, but big enough to be the largest text on the page. My masthead varies to Irish music’s in the sense that I went with what later became my magazine’s house style of having every masthead’s first letter being a lot larger than the entire masthead itself. I did this so that the audience knows where to start with the text as it is the largest on the page, but also graphologically it improves the look of the page as “Irish” is very smaller than Irish music on their masthead. My masthead, due to its easy-to-read font –“Tahoma”, its large letter at the start and the ending question mark-

11. Allows my masthead to become a brand image for my magazine which, would entice a reader by itself as it would be an easily recognizable image. I chose a very basic font – Tahoma – which I used throughout my 3 piece’s in order to show consistency through my product. My font can carry a mood, through its basicness, calmness, as well as readability. I chose this for a folk magazine because folk music isn’t aggressive as rock, its calmer and therefore went writing a music magazine on the music genre a calm font was needed. On my front cover I used the same font throughout although in the drafting process I did attempt a different font for the masthead to try and make it stand out more, however, this looked unprofessional and also unattractive when in the perspective of my receiver's. Masthead differences – notice the different places of the tagline under the text on my text and the tagline above on Irish music.

12. The images below are as I have already mentioned the edited eyes to make them look more attractive and appeal to the reader due to their beauty through their natural blueness improved by increasing the amount of the colour cyan in the eyes and then increasing the brightness of the face to make her skin seem more shiny and attractive to the reader. Original Syntagem

13. Contents Evaluation

14. The structure I chose for my contents page is that of a basic structure separating the items of my magazine that readers would be familiar with; “The Regulars.” by referring to the usual items as the informal “The Regulars” allows a semantic field of “regulars” being that of those who regularly enter a public house, a pub house being where alcohol is sold and normal ideas of folk music like bands such as the wurzels who sing folk songs of drinking cider which allows my piece to stay within the typical stereotypes of Folk music. The structure I have chosen was taken not from a music magazine but from an issue of the “Sunday Times” magazine from 2008 which has a basic yet effective contents page, and although not used in a previous music magazine, has been used in a highly successful mixed audience supplement. By separating the images of the columnists and the articles, it sends a clear message to the reader of where to find the columnists and what their articles are about when compared with the articles written about specific artists/groups. I have also separated the two “sets” of images to show the reader that the artists or bands on the right hand side are in the magazine because they want to gain some form of advertising by being mentioned in the magazine whereas those on the left, the columnists, is their jobs and also their passion to write about a music genre which the audience can the strike a relationship with them due to the fact my magazine is aimed at fans of Folk music. I opted for the colour Brown for the background of my piece. Brown can often be seen as a boring colour however, I specifically chose this colour due to the fact that the colour Brown connotes a feeling of friendliness, something which I want my target

15. Audience to feel when they open up my magazine due to the fact that being a teenager which is the age of my target audience, I myself can relate to it being very tough and stressful what with deadlines, exams, relationships and so much more so by having a magazine that offers a sense of escapism to a troubled person then the chosen colour of Brown gives off that friendliness vibe. The colour also gives off an idea of Beer. Beer is a stereotypical association of Folk music, of Beer drinking men playing a guitar. However, although I already mentioned my magazine was to attract an audience who like folk who are young, some of who may not be old enough to drink at all thus by having this colour as my background, they get a sense of rebelliousness because they are witnessing something which looks like Beer but without having one which would make them enjoy my magazine. Brown connotes a sense of orderliness, in which on my contents page I aimed to achieve due to the fact that by having an organized and well set out page that’s easy to follow it means my target audience can easily find the article which they want to read which would be displayed on this page. The Brown helps this by not only connoting orderliness but also by combining with my white font allows the reader to see everything easily to get to the page they want to read. On my contents page I opted to have a small box dedicated to offering the reader the chance to “follow” the magazine via social media. I chose to place this box on the contents page due to the fact that this will be one of the most read and looked at pages in the magazine due to the fact that my target audience will be looking at this page to see where all the articles are and by placing this box on this page they are more likely to notice it and further become indulged in my magazine by “following” or “liking it. The fact that the majority of youths in society today have social networking capabilities would seem like an obvious reason to include this into my magazine due to the fact that they can pass on news and information about my magazine to friends and family and random people all across the world. Just underneath this box, I placed the names of all those people who helped “create”

16. The magazine (fictional bar myself of course) in order to make my piece seem more authentic and keep with the true conventions of a real media product due to the fact every magazine I looked at had credits at the bottom of the page in order to show the reader who helped make the magazine. In many magazines the credits box goes often unnoticed by readers so I purposefully placed the credits by the social media box as this will probably be one of the most noticed boxes and therefore by having it in a close proximity to the other box meaning that too will be read and hopefully those people who make the magazine would be given the recognition they deserve but never normally get. The purpose of the large numbers on the photos on both the columnists side and the article side are there to show the reader which page the article is on so they easily can turn to it. This links with my idea of simplicity within my magazine which would allow my target audience to enjoy the piece more thanks to this. The size of the numbers also links to the way I attempt to attract my target audience due to their size they are hard not to notice but also the “house style” of big, bold letters in white making the reader more comfortable reading the magazine as it is easy to follow. These numbers also link to those in the middle of the page in order to show what the articles are about showing the purpose of my contents page is to give the reader a basic overview of what's to come within the magazine. The numbers on the photos link to the same numbers which indicates where the page for that article is but by having a small explanation it shows my contents page’s purpose by briefly telling the reader about the articles but not fully going into them in order to make the reader turn to that page to find out the whole -

17. Story. The purpose of my masthead on my page keeps the house style again with the “C” of contents taking up a large portion of the top of the page. By again having the large masthead again implies the idea of simplicity due to the fact that the masthead is easily readable. The credits box. The names of the jobs in the credits were copied from the Sunday times' magazine. By using alliteration I attempted to make the reader want to follow the magazine on social networking websites by making the title of the box fun to say but also linking it to the whole piece due to the fact it starts with an “F” and is to do with folk music. I also referred to the target audience as Folkers due to the fact my TA are fans of the genre and by calling them this it would directly adressing them.

18. Double Page Spread Evaluation

19. I split my double page spread into 3 images, all of the same model. I did this for many reasons. The first being a passing of time and emotion. By having the eyes closed in one photo shows sadness but over time, as the story progresses the eyes open and a smile appears on the model’s face. This is done to link with the story’s progression of time and emotion. I also chose a variety of shots, two close ups and a head and shoulders shot, in order for the character to get a good look at what the protagonist looks like but also to see her facial expressions up close in order to strike a relationship with the reader. The images are all edited just like the front page, in order to increase the model’s already existent beauty to try to attract the reader to the page through this. I purposefully placed the model’s edited eyes (added more cyan to make them more blue), under the subheading box in order for once that reader has read that small box, the eyes will be watching them with a smile watching them read the story of my protagonist. The red dashed around the page within her hair connotes a feeling of lust, which I added in so the reader, a teenage audience, would be attracted to her and want to read on to find out more about her. The relevance of the yellow flower ties in with the entire story of the page. Linking with the masthead of the page, the subtle flower related hints within the story and the hidden message of the story. I specially chose a mixed yellow and white flower due to the fact that the colour white represents perfection and purity and yet the colour yellow connotes a warning showing that through the image even perfection can fall to pieces showing a message to the reader that no matter who you are, nobody’s perfect which sadly many teenagers strive for what society would deem “perfection” only for it to cause

20. Anxiety and lead to unhappiness or worse, self harm. Another reason why my page is so image dominated is that my target audience love images. Being teenagers they want a mixture of images and text in order to keep them interested so by splitting my text into 4 columns of near equal size allows my double page spread to be enjoyed by my target audience as well as read. My double page spread also keeps the consistency of the large letter and large masthead trend throughout my magazine. However, I opted for a different font to the masthead. It still being readable but I went with a font that, due to its fancy curves and joining's looks to me like it belongs on the brochure of a botanical garden center which links entirely to this mass them of flowers. By keeping the same sort of house style principles of the way I write mastheads to try to keep the relationship with the reader but also this mass linking surrounding the concept of flowers/garden tries to also entertain the reader at the same time. The language used is a vocabulary that my target audience will be familiar with. By using taboo lexis to keep the reader entertained through humour also helps in the vocabulary as they’re words that teenagers are associated as they portray rebelliousness through their foulness. I used a mixture of complex and simple sentences in order to make my piece seem hard to understand like the character the sentences describe. A lot of flower reference words such as “marigold” were used throughout the piece again to try and emphasize this double page wide focus on flowers to try to show the beauty of the model due to the fact that flowers are associated with beauty

21. Here are the edited eyes purposefully placed under my brief explanation of my article In order to catch the reader’s eye by using my model’s own attractive eyes. The content style of my double page spread is an interview with a fictional artist. The way I can show my piece is in interview style, due to the fact that I used quotes by the artist in order to seem like the interviewer asked certain questions and then typed up her answer via continuous prose. By using large quotes in the piece being a method to attract the reader’s attention due to the fact most of my target audience will read a small segment and skim read the rest, so by having large quotes will allow my reader to skip read but see these quotes and read them and get an understanding of the piece without reading it fully. In order to give off that authentic style I also used drop capitols firstly to give my piece an authentic look but secondly, in order to show my reader who as mentioned will most likely skim read my product, showing the reader where certain areas start in order to read certain important areas.

22. What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why? My main idea was to publish this via an online means such as a website due to the fact that society today is changing and becoming more and more technology bases and by having a product that is fully based online would allow my piece to compete successfully due to that fact that costs such as printing on paper would be taken out of the equation of production as it would be fully online. And the youths of today, of which my magazine being based at a young audience, are fully immersed in using online means to get their information or in this case musical reading material. But, in order to have a product to properly read I would opt try and get What the Folk? Published with Rhinegold publishing. This Is due to the fact Rhinegold produce many quality and successful music magazines of which their genre’s are lesser popular ones such as classical. Due to the fact that folk too is under represented, a clear theme I have tried to subtly show through my piece, Rhinegold would be be able to make a printed copy of my piece which my target audience would be able to purchase from any newsagents which would mean my magazine would be distributed around the country advertising to lots of my target audience through this as almost every town in the country has a newsagents of some form. However, by having a cross media experience of a printed product with online capabilities with a website and social media page or two would allow my product to become a success if distributed this way.

23. How does your media product represent particular social groups? My media product presents youths as troubled. By having a main story as a self – harming and drinking teenager shows that teenagers no matter what their social standing deal with stress and anxiety in different ways. I chose this story due to the fact from previous experience I know myself that alcohol and self harm abuse is writhe within today’s teenagers. But, I opted to show my protagonist overcoming her problems to show that these issues of self harming and obsessive drinking when teenagers can affect later life. By having a role model figure who overcomes the problems that the social group as a whole that some teenagers face, being in a similar age range to them shows my media product represents the social group of teenagers as troubled and yet responsible and mature and especially brave enough to change their lives and overcome their problems by themselves. I opted to place females in my magazine as attractive. By showing female models as attractive it would attract a male (and in cases female) audience wanting to read the magazine for the attractive models. Every person used in the magazine is white. This shows I have opted to portray Folk musicians as whites due to the fact stereotypically Folk musicians are white and I wanted to attempt to try and portray typical folk to attract fans whilst at the same time rebelling against the genre.

24. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? From constructing my product I learnt that websites like wordpress don’t work when you want them to so you have to be patient with technology. I also learnt how to change colours in Photoshop for example the red in my main model, Emily’s hair, I increased the Hue and added more vermillion in order to make it much more fiery to give off the lust effect. In Photoshop I also learnt how to crop images to sizes you want and how to adjust the brightness of people’s faces to remove spots and other facial impurities and give off an angelic feel. When using search engines like Google to find images of Folk music magazines, I learnt by placing the searching words in capitols or in speech marks it refines your search to those words in capitols/speech marks in order to find the most suitable image. By using InDesign it allowed me to see that one needs to change image quality in order to get the highest quality to look the best when printing a magazine in order to have amazing looking images and remove pixilation. In PowerPoint I learnt how backgrounds can affect how good your presentation is by choosing the right one for the setting your presenting your presentation to. I also learnt in PowerPoint what a slide transition is (the interesting way in which one slide changes to the next) and applied it to appropriate presentations.

25. What do you feel you have learnt from the production of your preliminary task to the full product? I feel I have learnt how to build a magazine effectively and for a specific target audience. I learnt how to make small translucent boxes to go behind writing on my page rather than making large opaque boxes in order not to cover the majority of my images on my pages like I did on my preliminary task. I also feel I have learnt to take photos myself rather than be the model myself due to nervousness about being in a photo. I learnt how to take a photo of a decent standard and be able to edit it effectively rather than random pressing buttons like I did In my preliminary task. I believe that I have learnt to make something that is attractive to the reader which I believe my preliminary task was not. This is because I had more time to produce the piece with the ability to ask my target audience whether they find my product attractive or not, in which case they did.

26. From Draft to Syntagem.