Uses and Gratification

Uses and Gratification is theory explaing what do people do with media. This theory explains why people buy magazines from the psychological side. This theory is often called media traditional research. McQuail in 1983 came up with the most important question for uses and gratification "Why do people use media and what do they use them for?"

Music magazine Front Cover

 

Draft 1

 

Draft 2

 

Draft 3

 

Front cover Ideas

NME Behind The Scenes

NME music magazine behind the scenes. This video shows how photoshot is takein by profesional photographers.

This is just an example of what a rock make up should look like. I think that this video i very relevan to my work as make up is the main element of rock styling.

Front cover Picures

Those are just some picures that I took for preperation of my Music Magazine Front Cover.

How often are music magazines published and what is the cost of them ?

Rock Music magazine conventions

Rock Music magazine conventions

Practice picures for my music magazine front cover.

The main purpose to do those picures was to learn how to use lighting and see how much it effects the picure. I took four different picures useing different strenth of light or set them in different position. We see that the first picure has not enought light and the last one hass too much light. Those are all medium shots as I chosed that frameing for my magazine.

ICT Mock up for my music magazine (front,content,double page)

Rock magazine moodboard

I have chosen rock genre for my music magazine. This i because it is my favourite genre of music and it will be interesting to work on. Rock music is also quite popular and there are many existing rock magazines that can be very helpful example for me. My favourite rock band is Evanescence.

Evanescence is a rock band that was created in 1995 and is still playing. The band was created by single artist Amy Lee with a guitarist Ben Moody. In 2003 the band recorded their first full album called Fallen. Their album came out to be sucesfull as they sold over 17 million copys worldwide. There are also many others rock band that are popular. There is a magazine that is called "rock" this magazine focus on old rock. Many people like rock music from 1960's and it doesn't happen so often in othenr genres of music. Rock first appeared in America as "rock and roll" in 1940's, and was most popular in United Kingdom  and USA. Rock was heavy influence by rythym and blues and country mysic.

Readers Profiles similar to demographics, Magazine create a readers profile in order to know characteristics and what they think about the magazine. Reader Profile includes age, gender, vacation and their demographics category. Advanced readers profile also include statistic about their life, this mean that they know on average how many hours per week they spend online. Those detailed statistic help to show what the average reader is interested in. This information helps to montage the magazine.

How is Demographic used in Media ?

Demographics- These Key Words is wildly used in Media and Sociology, demographics mean to group people in order to know they needs. Media institutions use this to create the product that a specific group of people will buy. Media institutions create readers profile that involve all the information about the average customer. Those are linked with the characteristics that the average person who would want to buy it. Because of study of demographics, Media magazines, TV and other media institutions fulfill the reader’s expectations and earn millions. Without demographics media would not have a gender of the magazine or different types of them. Media demographics is considered in all small factors of the magazine, for example a title has to sound cleaver and formal for a business magazine when a woman’s magazine has to be polite and very stereotypical with woman. Those are the needs of society and the individual.

A – Higher managerial, administrative or professional. 3%

B – Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional. 15%

C1 – Supervisory or clerical, junior managerial, administrative or professional. 23%

C2 – Semi-skilled manual workers. 28%

D – Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers. 18%

E – Casual labourers, unemployed, state pensioners. 13%

This is an example on how media institutions grade people. They have those statistics from the surveys that they take. For example we have a person who works as a factory worker and he earns 15 thousand pounds per year. This person is placed in a C2 category and can only afford 2 pounds for a music magazine, therefore the magazine will spend a certain amount of money so they make a profit.

Thoser are my 10 questions for the Focuc Group video:

1.What is your favourite music magazine ?
2. Why?
3.What is your favourite genre of music ?
4.How much are you willing to pay for a music magazine ?
5.Would you rather read a magazine or buy it online ?
6.What would encourage you to buy a magazine ?
7. How often do you buy a music magazine ?
8.What would you improve in your magazine ?
9. What convections would you expect in the music magazine ?
10. What other types of magazine genres are you interested in ?

 

Wyke cover magazine evaluation

 

This is my finished wyke college front cover page.

LIAR analysis:

·         Media Language- My pain picture was taken at the college library as I think it is the best place to show how students at wyke are studying; also there are always many people in the library, this show how many students attend there. When planning my picture I wanted to take an over shoulder shot of student working at the computer desk. However I thought that having someone’s face on the cover is important. Person on the picture smiles while doing his work. We can see that he was concentrated on it as he still holds the computer mouse and sits opposite the computer. He only turned his head around when I took a picture. I placed the title on the top to make the magazine look more professional as this is a popular convection. Also the title is purple, this link with Wyke College logo.  Under the tile I placed a pull quote about university, this links to what the student is doing as he writes his “personal statement”.

Ideology- The idea behind this magazine is to support student and provides information. I have all the pull quotes based on students or events. This pulls audience attention and makes the magazine really useful.

Representation- I tried to stay with the convections. I placed the barcode on the left bottom corner as I noticed on other magazines. Also the convection of the picture, in the picture I tried to include the computer and the books in the background as those are stereotypes for a student. I have also included Wyke web site, the date and the text box, all as conventions.

 

When montage the magazine I thought of the use of colours, this means that all the text is visible even the background is very colourful, it was difficult to find a good colour and place it in a visible place without changing convection. If I had a chance to do my magazine again and improve it, I would work on my Photoshop skills as those are really important. I think the fonts and the colours are not working together fully, this shows that the magazine is not professional. Also I took my picture in a wrong way, If I would turn the camera around the main image would not be as stretched as it is, this will also improve the quality of the picture making it look better. Regarding to the picture, everyone is sitting down and in the background there is a woman that is standing. We can clearly see that the woman is not a student and she’s not learning, this affect the mood in my picture. Another think is the students hand, it would look better if he would have his hand on the keyboard pretending to work. This would add realism to my magazine.

Times magazine front cover and content page analasys

College Magazine Moodboard

 

 

To design a front cover, contents and doublee page spread of a new music magazine. All images and text used must be original, minimum of four images must be used.

Front cover conventions analysis