FINAL WORK

Dear Moderator

Welcome to my blog. I hope you enjoy reading all about my coursework; everything relating to it is labelled underneath 'foundation portfolio'. Here is all of my research, planning, preliminary work and final pieces that I have worked hard on and learnt a lot about in the past few months. Thankyou for looking!
Marianne Haynes.

Preliminary Front Cover & Contents

Evaluation Task 1

In my magazine, The Beat, I incorporate several generic conventions of other magazines; namely ones that I styled my own magazine on. Firstly I made my ident simple, bold and straightforward like the NME ident. I downloaded a font named Clubland from www.dafont.com and put the words “The” and “Beat” in separate boxes. I rotated the first word so it went up the side of the second and made both words large and noticeable. The font was also in the style of disco lights which added to the musical feel of the title which suited the genre of magazine.
Secondly I kept to a three colour palette. Whereas most magazines choose black, white and red I opted instead for black, white, and turquoise as these are all gender neutral and keep the page looking simple yet effective. However, for Zoe’s name on the double page spread I incorporated a purple for her name to make the feature on her look more feminine.
I kept the font scheme simplistic with 2 different fonts on the front cover; however I break this rule for the contents page and double page spread by incorporating another font for page numbers, date of release and name of bands featured. By using a small variation of font style and size I manage to break up the pages and make them interesting whilst keeping it simple and easy to read – my pages aren’t too busy.

Evaluation Task 2

Here is the model on my front cover and the singer Laura-Mary Carter. I partly based Zoe's character on Laura-Mary as they are of similar height and age. Although Laura-Mary is brunette and Zoe blonde the style is similar and they pose in almost the same way - they look bored but are pouting slightly and look very posed and almost stiff. This fits with the genre of music that they play. (Indie, Folk-rock).

In my photographs Zoe is dressed in a dark dress with a large, flowery statement necklace. Laura also wears a dress; however it is more visible in the photograph. They both wear similar makeup; dark around the eyes with brighter pink lipstick and cheeks. Their eyebrows are defined and their faces are pale. This style of makeup is also typical for the genre I am aiming for within my magazine.

Despite my magazine being gender neutral; I am representing girls and women aged 16-25 with the cover photograph. This issue could draw more females in as Zoe could be an icon for the feminine half of my target audience - the men might not read a magazine that has a woman on the cover. This is one drawback of the artist I have chosen.

Evaluation Task 3

Evaluation Task 3

For task 3 I had intended to commentate on my magazine via voiceover but as I didn't have the technology to make this possible I decided instead to post the script of what I had planned to say.

Evaluation Task 4

MY TARGET AUDIENCE

My target audience is teenagers aged 16-25 with an interest in Indie, Rock and Brit-pop music, vintage, books and fashion. I connect with this audience in a number of ways, named in Task 5. If you click on the photograph above, you can see the profile of The Beat's readers.

My media product represents my target audience, teenagers aged 16-25 from a working class background, namely students. I represented this audience primarily through my gender neutral font, topics and colour palette. The photos throughout my magazine are of teenagers dressed in Indie clothing which means that my target audience can associate with these bands.