Produce a magazine aimed at teenagers for the audience of male readers aged 13-19 year old.

Production Report

Original Brief

I have been asked to produce a magazine aimed at teenagers for the audience of male readers aged 13-19 year old.

As I am working individually I would need to produce the front cover and at least one double page spread article from the magazine. Also I would need to have a minimum of three original images.

Research into similar media texts

The magazines that I have studies are:

Shoot Magazine

Auto Express Magazine

World Soccer Magazine

Zoo Magazine

Sky Magazine

From these magazines I have found out that they share a similar layout and style to their front covers. I have found out that most of the magazines share the same positioning of their heading. It is mainly in the top of the magazines and mostly in the centre. Most magazines tend to have the price of the magazine on the top and others would have it at the bottom. Majority of the women magazine would have pictures of women on the front cover.

The layouts of the ‘shoot’ and ‘auto express’ magazines were similar, as there was one main picture in the middle of the page, with a few smaller pictures around the front cover. Each of which has the heading of the magazines and also the price of the magazines at the top of the page.

In the ‘shoot magazine’ a football was used instead of an “O” as the magazines is to do with football. Also in the magazine the colour red is used mostly in the background and the writing to make the magazine stand out.

In the ‘Auto Express’ magazines the main focus on the front cover was the new jaguar car. It is a well-known car manufacturer and the car looks stylish like the magazines. There are also little pictures at the bottom of the page. They are smaller as they are not as important as the jaguar car and also they are pictures front the content of the magazine.

From the magazines I had observed the amount of pictures in the magazines, the amount of adverts in the magazine and a question to do with that particular magazine. I found out that the ‘world soccer’ magazine has more pictures in the content compared to the ‘shoot’ magazine which had fewer pictures. Most of the adverts in the magazines were selling products to the audience. The football magazine advert targets people who are interested into football. The car magazine adverts targeted the people who are interested in cars and buying cars. From this I have learnt that I should have adverts to do with the content of the magazine. I should include enough pictures for the audience to understand my magazine.

Audience Research

For my research I had carried out a questionnaire for 30 random people, asking questions to do with magazines and interests of the audience. I have carried out this questionnaire for the ages of people aged 15 – 19. I have chosen this age group, as my magazines will be aimed at the mature teenage group. I have found out that 10% would like to have the magazine on sports and girls and 16% would like to have activities in the magazine. My target audience would be people who are into sports and music. From ...

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Audience Research

Planning

From this project I have acquired development and technical skills. Some of which includes how to operate programs such as Photoshop Elements and Microsoft Publisher. I have learnt how to manipulate images using Photoshop. There are many skills that I have learnt using Photoshop:

Move tool – where I was able to move images from one page to another.
Crop tool – how to crop images to make it fit on the page.
Magic wand tool – where I was able to highlight areas which are not needed and erase them.
Type tool – where I was able to add text anywhere on the page and edit that text.
Gradient tool – where I was able to customise the gradient of the colours that I needed.

The procedure that I had to do to make sure that my planning and construction ran smoothly was to make sure that all my information was gathered before I started even making the magazine. I would also have to take all my pictures before I even made my magazine so that I would have an idea on what my articles would be on and the images I was going to use on the front cover and the articles. I did a few thumbnail designs for the front cover and the articles so that I would know the layout and positioning of both the images and text. For my images I had to decide what I would be taking the pictures on and where the pictures would be taken. The original idea for my magazine that I had was to do it on sports. I had to think about what sports to do my magazine on and what to talk about in the magazine. I had a few locations in mind for the images that I wanted to take, but the problem was who to take to photo of. As badminton is a sport that I play weekly at a club it gave me a chance to get players of great talent. The other location in mind was a snooker club from which I would be able to take photos of people playing pool. As I didn’t get a chance to go to a club I had to find another location to take photos of people playing pool, where I then used my own house. The pool table that I have was perfect as I was able to take photos of different shots and not worrying about the time and cost of the games. The main problem that I had was choosing a good name for my magazine. I had many ideas but could not decide the perfect name for the magazine. I decided to wait until I had finished the construction of the magazine so that it would be easier to thing of a good name suited to the magazine that is created.

Construction

The decision that I made for my final front cover was to put one of my own images as the background of the page. For my front cover I had used Photoshop Elements to create the final design for my front cover. This program had many features that came in useful for me to make my front cover look professional. On the front cover I had decided to put two smaller images to show the content of the magazine. I did not want to make the front cover look too packed so I did not add too mush text or pictures as I wanted to have a simple look to the page. I used two images that I had used in the articles to show what is to come inside. Next to each of the images I put a few cover lines trying to get the reader to be more drawn into the magazine. I decided to put the price and the issue number at the bottom of the page so it would not distract the reader. Once the front cover was finished I still had to think of a good name to put as the title of my magazine. As the magazine was to do with sports I came to the conclusion to name my magazine “SPORTZZ”. I felt this name would be perfect for a sports magazine aimed at teens.

The locations that I chose to do my pictures were at the badminton club in Northwood, where they were taken inside a hall of people playing badminton. The first intension of my other photos that were to be taken was at Riley’s snooker club but as I did not have time to go I decided to take the photos in my house of a few people playing snooker on the table that I have. For one of the articles I had decided to do it on badminton. I have added 4 images on that page to do with badminton. When I went to the club to take the photos I got a few pictures semi professional’s players who came from Sri Lanka to train people at the club. This really helped me when it came to writing the articles. In the article I added a few training tips for people who are thinking of playing badminton and people who already play. The article should encourage people who do not play to join a club and play badminton. The font that I decided to use was “Monotype Corsiva” font as I thought it looked more stylish rather than having a normal plain font.

For the second article page I decided to create it on snooker. It was easier for me to do an article on snooker as I had a snooker table in my house so I could easily get good photos taken at any time I needed it. For this page I wanted it to look a little similar to the first article so I decided to put 4 images on that page. As people find snooker hard I added a few snooker tips into the article so that they would be able to teach themselves how to play.

For my front cover my first intension was to put a footballer as the main image, but as I didn’t have a chance to get original photos for football so I couldn’t create an article on football. Once I did get all my photos it helped me make the decision to put and badminton pictures as the main image, making it easier to create an article on badminton.

Evaluation

Once I had finished my final Front cover I was very pleased with the final outcome. Once it was finally printed I felt it looked like a proper magazine cover. I felt that when I decide to change my background from the footballer to the badminton players would not work but once I actually got it fully finished and printed it looked really good. The other pictures that were on the front cover blended in well in the positions that they were put in.

The final badminton article once it was finished looked good, as an article in a magazine. It had the look for a good teenage magazine article. As the photos that I got were of people who are semi professional it made it easier to write the article on them so it would work well. I was pleased with the final article in general as it looked like a professional magazine article page. Once I got to the snooker article I had a few problems when it came to finishing the final page. After it was sorted I finished that article page. This page did not look as good as the other pages as the images used in the article was not as good standard compared to the other images so it did not make it look very professional. As the images were not up to standard the article was not as good as the previous page.

In general I believe that the magazine will work for teenagers as the articles were based on teenagers and all the images take were of teenagers either playing snooker or badminton. Also the article that was made was aimed at teenagers because it gave tip on how to play both sports well where teenagers find hard.

The front cover that was created worked well as the background image was the main image on the page so it would focus the reader into looking at that picture first and reading about them. I used a big font in blue for my title so that the name of the magazine would stand out. The main cover lines were in red font so that they look important and the reader would look at it. For my Badminton and snooker article I used a big font on the title of the page so that the reader would be able to know what each page is about. When ever I used an image I described them so that the reader would know what is going on, on each image. The way I put the name of the magazine and the page number worked really effectively.

Overall I was pleased with my final Magazine, and I believe it was successful in meeting the demands that were required.