Q3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
In an ideal world, I would have selected an independent publishing company to distribute my magazine because my magazine contains so much inside it that it could easily cover three or four magazines alone. If I had to select one I would have to pick one that do not currently distribute a hip-hop magazine, and for that reason I would select IPC Media because they only currently distribute one magazine, which is ‘NME’.
IPC Media were founded in 1968 and are a magazine publisher based in the United Kingdom and are a subsidiary of Time inc. They currently have 61 titles underneath their name and sell 350 million magazine copies every year. It would benefit not only our magazine but the publisher as well because there is very minimal competition on the British market for hip-hop magazines so by introducing one would maximize profits as by releasing one you are satisfying a demand from British hip-hop fans.
With regards to distribution, I would like my magazine to be sold at most chained newsagents in the United Kingdom, and all four of the ‘big four’ supermarkets (Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s). From there I will be able to reach people interested in magazines to buy the magazine, but to further maximize sales I would then expand to music stores such as HMV and Play.com to sell my magazine because I would reach out to a lot of hip-hop fans.
I would promote subscription as I already give the reader the option to subscribe on the contents page. I would need to utilize e-marketing as a platform to spread the use of my magazine. I would produce a website which would feature a lot of exclusive a lot of exclusive content which cannot be received via a magazine e.g. a video of an interview. I would also use social media like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to interact with readers of the magazine
Q4 from james_mccarthy
Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
For taking the shots I used an SLR camera.
I used two different camera settings when I was taking the shots which were
dependent on the setting. When I was taking the shots in an outside setting,
which wasn’t in the studio so variables weren’t controlled e.g. the weather, I
wouldn’t use flash mode because there is enough light as it stands. When I was
in an inside setting I would use flash to maximize the image’s potential. With
lighting, I would use high-key lighting inside the studio as it would beam upon
the model and boost the artist’s image.
For doing audience research I used an
online questionnaire website called ‘SurveyMonkey’ which would enable a user to
but a survey online and get responses from people. I used that website to get
the opinion of the general public about magazines and hip-hop. The responses I got enabled me to progress in
the production stages of the magazine, and I used the responses to produce
graphs so I can clearly see the most popular for each different question.
When producing the pages themselves, I used
Adobe Photoshop, which is a software mainly used for editing images. The most
frequently used tool on Photoshop for me was the magnetic crop tool which would
enable me to cut the background out of the images that I took in the studio. I
used the text tool very often also to implement the text in my piece. I also
used the grid tool to align all of images together on the page. I also used a website called ‘dafont.com’
which is a text generator and provides users with advanced pieces of text which
opposes the very generic ones provided by Adobe.
