D1: Analyse techniques and processes to create meaning in the media product

Front cover

Contents Page

Double Page Spread

How have i created meaning in my magazine?

Here are my finished designs for my magazine. I have followed the client brief by creating these pages of the genre i have chosen. I chose to create my magazine based on rap&hip-hop music genre and a rapper called Juice WRLD because it is a very popular genre of music and is widely recogniseable. Also, Juice WRLD was one of the most popular rappers and he had a career that i felt was inspiring and i could talk about in depth. You can see my development of creating my magazine from my P5 report, however i will now summarise what i did here. Throughout the process of creating the magazine, i used professional hardware from iMacs, and used industry standard tools such as the Adobe suite. I used photoshop to create the graphics, backgrounds, edit the photos and create the magazine. 

I chose to edit all of my photos in Photoshop as that is a professional photo editing tool and i used photoshop to finish the photo the way i wanted for my magazine. The first thing i did to the photo was change the levels of the photo, which included brightness and contrast. For example, i turned the green leaves into a cool purple colour to better match my genre and styles as there was alot of purple being used.

For my front cover, i have researched codes and conventions from magazines that already exist and have created a report on this. I used examples to help me learn the codes and conventions of magazines. Here is the example of a front cover i used to guide me when creating my very own. I wanted my magazine to entertain and educate my audience.

When following the codes and conventions of this magazine i learnt many new thins. My photo should be a close up or medium close up of my model and they should be looking at the audience as it is engaging. I have seen how real magazines incorporate codes and conventions and i learnt how to apply these to my own including a bold masthead at the top and other things such as tagline, content and a quote from the model. I learnt that variations of fonts are important as it makes the magazine look more interesting. Also, i leant that the more important text should be bold and be a different colour , which can entertain the audience. I also learnt the masthead should be in the top left corner and i have learnt that real magazines write taglines, cover lines and puffs. 

Contents Page

I have used another rap contents page as my example to guide me for my contents page. The purpose of content's pages are to show people what articles are in the magazine.

Throughout the devlopment of my contents page  i have learnt many different things. The numbers are a different colour so that they stand out on the page. I placed the image on the right of the page after researching into different contents pages that exist, I found that most had the image in the same place and had the information on the left as people read left to right. 

Double page spread

Here is the example double page spread that i used. I used a music DPS and used the same arrangement. 

When creating my double page spread i have learnt that drop caps are important to draw the attention of the reader however before this i didn't realise they were necessary. I also learnt how to write a magazine article. Before writing this i had never written an article before so i had to learn how to address the audiences. I based my article around interviews that Juice WRLD had prior to this. Also, i learnt that a tagline is important to intrigue the audience before they read as it could draw them in more.

I have many strengths to my magazine, here are the strengths of my magazine. I have followed and copied codes and conventions of other magazines. I did this by making sure the layout of my magazine fits the layouts of other magazines that already exist. Another strength is that the content in my magazine fully relates to the genre and constantly focuses on Juice WRLD. I ensured this by taking relevant photographs and creating appropriate graphics. Also, i have used darker colours to ensure the audience i target are older and mature, as the audience i want to aim at is 18-25-year-olds.

Although i had many strengths to my magazine, there are some areas where i think i could have improved.  I didn't take many different photos of my model so i didn't get the best possible quality such as some may have looked fuzzy, or the poses could have been more appropriate. Also, i could have got the model to wear a more specific outfit so that i didn't have to take more time to edit their clothing how i wanted it to be.

Feedback:

I created a survey on Google forms to gather feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of my 4 magazine pages. I will react to the feedback by making necessary changes.

What changes could I make?:

Front cover:

Here are the changes I was recommended to make

Reduce saturation and shadows and it is very heavily edited

Use a more professional studio quality photo and use better light

Contents page:

These are the changes that were recommended to me

Increase highlights on the subject as they are very dark compared to text and background

Similarly to the front cover, use better lighting and camera to ensure the highest possible quality

Double page spread:

Here's some changes I could make to my double page spread

Increase size of subject because there is alot of space around the page, which doesnt look as appealing

Include more graphics to make it appealing to view