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Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Monday, March 24, 2025
Statement of intent
How do you intend to use the four areas of the media theoretical framework to communicate meaning and meet the requirements of your chosen brief? (approx. 400 words)
Product 1
My chosen brief requires that I design a music magazine aimed at a 16-25-year-old, middle-market audience that likes to be entertained. The first step will be deciding on the type of content the magazine will contain. The relevant audience is likely to indulge in current mainstream pleasures such as cinema and fashion, and will have the money to do so. They may also be concerned with current affairs which do or will affect the youth in some way. Therefore the magazine will be of the variety sort, featuring culture and current affairs articles in addition to its music-related columns. Specific examples of miscellaneous articles to be incorporated include one on quick meal preparation, a topic which I have found to be a common interest among young adults. Other topics may include tech, Marvel and TikTok, which are all widely popular among 16-25-year-old demographics. Each article will be crafted to either cater for the target audience, reinforce the brand identity of the magazine, or both. This should be apparent when reading the contents pages. Following the conventions of the music magazine industry, each cover will exhibit a sole, undisputed star as the main feature, exhibited without any other distracting images on the cover, with direct modes of address and composition. The feature artists will be late teens/young adults, to pander to the readership’s prejudices - their representations will be constructed to elicit a sense of boldness and defiance via their expressions and clothing, with the goal of evoking the general dissatisfaction that the youth of today experience as a result of their lack of worldly influence in contrast to the older hegemony. The main feature will be framed by the masthead of the magazine, the design of which will be striking and dynamic in order to help the production to stand out among its competitors on store shelves. A radical masthead design alongside a consistently bold typeface will again beget previously discussed evocations, helping to cement the brand identity of the publication. To reinforce said identity, both magazine covers and contents pages will feature practically identical layouts, as far as the main skeleton of the magazine is concerned.
Product 2
It is standard practice in the industry for magazine publications to have a digital companion, usually in the form of a website or application. My magazine’s digital counterpart will serve as its own production with unique content rather than simply being an electronic alternative to the print magazine. This is because figures regarding print sales are gradually decreasing and so by having the two products be separate, people will have more incentive to purchase the physical media; if the content was the same, the target audience would gravitate away from the print publication due to the digital version being more convenient, especially for 16-25-year-old demographics. The website as a whole will follow a conventional layout and overall style that the target audience, being digitally native, will understand and be able to navigate naturally. Typical webpage elements such as header and footer will be incorporated, as well as a built-in promotional video and even an easter egg on the website to gratify the readership. The website will contain multiple instances of events, articles, etc. that will directly tell the reader to come back again for more content/information, maximising digital traffic to the site. A working home page will be featured, with general information about the magazine as well as exclusive articles and information regarding events. There will also be a portfolio-style page featuring the editor’s letters for each print publication to encourage readers of the magazine to visit the website.
How do you intend to link your media products to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of the digitally convergent nature of your media production? (approx. 100 words)
In order to encourage readers of the magazine to check out the website, the print magazine advertises website-exclusive articles along the bottom of each contents page. These are accompanied by hyperlinks and QR codes, which also appear in the corner of each cover, to make visiting the website as convenient as possible. To encourage fan participation across media products, there will be a competition in each magazine, advertised along the top of the contents pages, where the readers are given the opportunity to win a prize by finding an easter egg in the print publication and then going over the website for more information about how to enter. These competitions are referenced on the website’s home page. In addition to this, the website will contain an easter egg where, if the player clicks on one of the record graphics, the image is enhanced and will be able to move their mouse around to read the secret text on the label, which will say to tag the magazine on social media with a given codeword to win a copy of the next issue. It will also spoil the feature artist of the next issue to get fans talking about it online. Finally, the editor’s letters will be exclusive to the website. This will encourage readers of the print magazine to go to the website, and may pique the interest of digital audiences enough to entice them into buying the print publication.
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Intertextuality, webpages and 'easter eggs' (condensed for examiner reference)
INTERTEXTUALITY
· The juice is loose in Tim Burton’s latest graveyard romp (issue 1 cover) – reference to Beetlejuice’s catchphrase which he says in the new movie.
· Beetlejuice Beetlejuice XXXXXXXXXXX (issue 1 cover) – Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the title of the new film. The XXXXXXXXXXX below references the fact that in the film you cannot say his name three times, otherwise he will be summoned.
· Whatever people say I am, that’s what I’m not (issue 1 contents) – doubles as both an article title and a reference to the Arctic Monkeys’ debut album, which shares the same title.
· The juice is loose (again): a Beetlejuice Beetlejuice review (issue 1 contents) – Beetlejuice’s catchphrase in the new film, a sequel to Beetlejuice.
· Giles Martin: get back! (issue 1 contents) - title of retrospective article by Giles Martin, son of George Martin (record producer of the Beatles) references the Beatles song, Get Back.
· Deadpool and Wolverine: a truly terrible film... and you can quote me! (issue 1 contents) - references a popular comedic scene in the end credits of the movie which ends with the punchline “... and you can quote me!”.
· Best of the Beatles: broken faith (issue 1 contents) – article by Pete Best, an ex-Beatle who was kicked out of the band/betrayed. The title references one of his albums released after he was kicked out (Best of the Beatles).
· The fast and the fashionable (issue 1 contents) – article on fast fashion. Title resembles that of popular movie series The Fast and the Furious.
· The Screaming Abdabs and Leonard’s Lodgers: Welcome to the Machine (issue 1 contents) – article on Pink Floyd’s early days in the music industry. References the band’s past names as well as one of their songs.
· Sounds of the underground: dance rock icons (issue 1 contents) – references the song Sound of the Underground.
· The mean girls musical: stop trying to make fetch happen (issue 1 contents) – reference to a famous line in the original film (“stop trying to make fetch happen”).
· These go to eleven: the greatest rockumentaries of all time (issue 1 contents) – reference to Spinal Tap, a mock rockumentary (“these go to eleven”).
· Steve Lacy: my bad habits (issue 2 contents) – reference to one of his popular songs (Bad Habit).
· Sink your teeth into Tom Hardy’s latest and greatest Hollywood hit... Venom: last dance (issue 2 contents) – sink your teeth (Tom Hardy’s character, venom, eats people and has really long teeth).
WEBPAGES
· Home page.
· Editor’s Letters page.
· (Other interactive elements such as the ‘Articles’ button simply take the user to certain sections that are a part of one of the two web pages, so they are not separate pages in themselves).
EASTER EGGS
· On the home page on the website, there are music records that slide onto the screen above and below the ‘Our Mission’ section. Clicking on the lower one (with the blue label) will magnify the image, allowing the user to move their mouse around like a magnifying glass to reveal the hidden text on the label of the record that reads:
YOU FOUND ME!
Tag us on Instagram @TopickMagazine
with the code word ‘restless’
for the chance to win an early copy of Issue #3
featuring SAMMY STRINGS
This creates digital convergence and encourages fan participation.
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Based off of the feedback that I have received after presenting a pitch for my non-examination assessment, for which I chose Brief 3: Magazi... -
Website link: topickmagazine.wixsite.com/home Home page: Editor's letters page:
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