During the period of Web 1.0 advertisement was generally quite simple where it went:
Advertising ---> Consumer ---> Sales
However, as time went by and Web 2.0 went into play advertisers had to include more therefore it become:
Advertising ---> Awareness ---> Internet ---> Desire ---> Sales
It became the situation where consumers used advertisement rather than advertisements manipulating consumers.
Advertisers had to find ways of appealing to their audience this would be done in several ways, such as:
Claiming the product was new, modern or the latest product. An example of this would be the IPhone where they would adapt the previous product, when it is really the same thing but slightly altered.
Using cute babies, children or animals
Claim it's traditional, dependable or quality
Promote the feeling that the buying is superior or special
Using humour or wit
Imply scientific or technological advances
Suggesting that the product is the best on the market or a really great bargain
Suggesting that the product is unusual and unique, something you have never seen before.
I asked people who liked listening to hip hop and R&B music, as well as reading music magazines, what they liked and disliked about my flat plan so that I can incorporate their ideas into my final piece. I organised what they said into a table and these are the results:
After brainstorming different features for my magazine front cover and contents page. I have designed a flat plan for each incorporating the ideas from my target audience and focus group.
Front Cover
For my front cover, I want the image of my model to be at the very back and on the right with a retro, black and white, 90's filter over it so that it can have an old school style similar to old R&B and Hip Hop magazines. The font for the masthead is going to be quite urban, similar to graffiti style used in 'Fresh Prince of Bel Air' which allows it to target an older and younger audience as it can remind them of that show and time period. I used the X from where it dots the 'i' as a logo as it has continuity for the magazine and is easily recognizable. The subheadings are mainly going to be in black bold lettering so that it stands out depending on how important it is whilst important names are going to be highlighted in yellow. I want the magazine to have swatches of yellow throughout as it is an energizing colour connoting joy and stimulates mental activity, so information is taken in better. The yellow will also be used with the dividers between each cover line to, again, bring continuity, but separate different articles. I made sure that the left third contained the logo as well as the models name for easy recognition, however the bar code with the price is located on the right as I feel the price shouldn't entirely be the first thing you see as it may turn the reader away. Lastly the slogan is place right under the masthead so the reader understands the main objective of the magazine and that there is a direct correlation between the brand of the magazine and its market.
These are some magazines and themes which influenced my magazine:
Contents Page
My contents page is going to have the same model in however this time she will be on the left hand side, but facing right so she is not making eye contact with the reader. Her stance is still quite relaxed but the level of her importance is prominent in the way she is on both the cover and contents page. I place the logo in the very back this time and it will have a low opacity so that the black doesn't clash with it and the font is still readable, it is also enlarged compared to the front cover just to emphasis that it is the logo. For the masthead, I used the same font as the front cover too, which again is for continuity. I separated the two words onto separate lines so that the models face isn't overly covered. The numbers are in a different font as it gives the magazine a little variation, this is also incorporated in the subheadings and also in the article information. I hope to include more of the yellow into the contents page, either in the subheadings or the numbers. For the subheadings, I tried to include the different features that were suggested by my focus group to show that I was took into consideration their ideas.
These are some images which influenced my contents page:
My shot list is trying to show the artists in a location where they are comfortable making music as well as capturing them where they feel they are expressing themselves best. I have conducted 5 drawings on how I may want my final front cover to look like including different shot types; close ups and long shots. I also wanted to make sure I incorporated mise-en-scene so that when it comes to take actual photographs, I would know where I would want to take them.
I have gone into depth about how I wanted my magazine to look and what vibe I wanted to present by analysing various fonts as well as different model posture
I created a presentation annotating my ideas and and how it inspired my decisions.
Here's a reader profile of an ideal reader of my magazine:
Hey, my name is Lauryn Harmony Lamar. My mum named me after Lauryn Hill as she was her favourite artist growing up and now we listen to her all the time. I am 17 years old and study Music, Media Studies and Business Studies because I want to be a music producer when I'm older. I feel like black women need a better representation in music where they can be seen in their natural state and I want to be apart of that.
I love listening to music in my spare time or when I'm exercising because it keeps me relaxed and also motivated. My favourite genres would be Hip Hop, R&B and Rap and I usually read magazines like XXL and The Source. I usually pay a subscription fee for my the magazine, but I don't mind as there aren't many magazines like them. My favourite music artists would be J.Cole, Khalid, Rihanna, SZA and Nao. A lot of my friends have similar taste in music and we are always looking for new artists and music.
I decided to change up my focus group to people who I would consider to be be part of my target audience (Maryam, Kwamina, Umu & Danniqua). I read out 8 questions and this is what they answered:
My target audience for my magazine would be women between the ages of 13 and 25, I want to portray in particular, people of colour expressing their natural selves through music like rap, hip-hop, R&B etc. I intend on reaching out to those who have a passion for music and want to experience more that relates to them rather than stereotypes whether this is with existing or upcoming artists.
I have conducted a survey of 4 individuals (AJ, Danniqua, Maryam and Hajra) from my focus group discussing ideas relating to the magazine of what they would want to see more of.
Continuing with advertisement, three things have to be considered when creating print advertisement; media language, representation and audience which all work hand in hand to make successful media.
MEDIA LANGUAGE
Colour
Shot
Angle
Focus
Realism
Layout
Font
Design
Text
Copy
Mise-en-scene
REPRESENTATION
Who is seen?
How are they represented?
AUDIENCE
Target audience
What might they make of it?
How is the audience addressed?
How are values transferred?
Different cultures may respond to media differently as in eastern cultures they may read from left to right whereas in western culture we read from left to right, so it's important to consider these factors when creating advertisement.
It is thought that images are more powerful than words, so some companies may use less words and a strong picture to get their message across.
Slogans and strap lines are useful when you want the audience to remember your brand so it's common for advertisers to use rhymes, puns or imperatives to persuade people to remember and buy their product.
Knowing your audience is important because they are the ones you are targeting, so it is useful to know what tone of address you use which can be altered with the text and type face you use.
To reiterate on an earlier post, denotations and connotations are very important because the idea of various cultures may have different association with certain colours, images or language. There is also the theory of semiotics; Saussure says that there can be two level of meaning in an object the signifier and the signified.
Advertisement is the ways in which their products are promoted so that it is persuading enough for consumers to buy. Different companies have various ways of advertising and many features included so I am going to focus on them in this post.
To start off, the different ways that companies may choose to advertise would be:
Posters
Billboard
Magazine/Magazine
Social Media
Commercials
Radio
Celebrity Endorsement
Trailers
Sponsors
Companies need a brand where consumers can instantly know what products they sell and what that company is about. A brand is a type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name, for example; Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Adidas and Cadbury to name a few.
At a point there were 50 large companies who were involved in Cross Media Convergence/ Horizontal Integration This would mean that the companies would own different networks like music, news, film, transport, gaming, video etc. so that money would stay in-house and have exposure on all platforms. Overtime these companies decreased into 4 major labels; Universal, Warner, Sony and EMI which now is owned by Universal. These labels have a advantage as they have collective intelligence where if they are putting together a film, they have specific departments to collaborate who are expertise in that area.
There is also Vertical Integration which is slightly different as it is when companies own certain facilities to produce their products instead of using an outside source.
An example of a cross media link with Sony would be the James Bond franchise owned by Sony as well as Adele who sang the official theme song for one of the films which was also owned by Sony.
Now with a majority of films and music being streamed online for free illegally, these big companies had to find an alternative way of meeting the needs of the consumers as well as making a profit. What companies decided was to publish their music and movies online where it could be streamed for free, however the consumers would either have to pay a fee to download it or include advertisements in intervals so that it could afford being played for free.
The reason for these changes is because of the evolution of technology where we have evolved from web 1.0 to web 2.0.
Web 1.0 around 1996 was a read only web where you could only receive information from around 250,000 sites and approximately 45 million global users. Web 2.0 in comparison has a significant difference where people were able to also produce their own ideas and upload them online, this increased the site count to around 80,000,000 in only 10 years. By this point there were 1+ billion users and is still growing rapidly.
Convergence theory by Henry Jenkins states that there is a pressure for companies and consumers to work together to produce new media.
He believes that there is a category for new media created by companies to make people's lives easier and making things better accessed, e.g. oyster cards, online magazines, Netflix, online banking etc. Although this category is pretty vast there is also a category for active audiences where they would develop this ideas further to create things like parodies of existing videos, memes and even independent online shopping where they can sell their own items.
To link back to Cross Media Convergence, there is also something called a conglomerate where one company owns a controlling stake in a number of smaller companies, which conduct business separately. This is useful when you are really trying to get something across to the consumer, they may choose to use these other companies to sell their brand through synergy. Synergy could be simply done through a TV commercial where they use product placement to slyly advertise without you even realising. Here's an example:
'Create a front cover and contents page of a new music magazine using Photoshop.'
With this project I feel I have loads of areas to explore with this one topic of magazine. I listen to a lot of music, so this can be a very broad subject where I have to pick a genre I feel will be best suited. By only designing the front cover and the contents page allows me to focus on small details and make sure that any features included relates well to what I'm trying to get across, it will give me full control over what people can see and how they interpret what is being represented. I haven't used Photoshop much before, but I hope from this new experience I will be able to develop my skill with the software and get a glimpse of what it's like to design a magazine professionally.
I intend on making my magazine relate to the music I listen to as it will have an honest approach towards how it's designed and a better understanding to the feedback I get. The genre would probably be either Hip Hop/R&B or Musical Theatre/Classical which I feel we don't see a lot of. I hope to make my magazine aesthetically pleasing and easy to look at, as well as being enticing with pops of colour and bold font, so that it can appeal to both genders.
Here are a few examples of themes that I aspire to incorporate into my magazine:
Media is definitely a platform which has the ability to alter the way we see things, whether this is with Photoshop or how they layout the text. What is on the cover can foresee the content of the magazine and immediately tells the viewer what type of magazine it is, whether it is music, fashion, lifestyle etc.
As we have focused on 'The Big Issue' this past term, it was only fitting to deconstruct one of their own front covers which regarded the situation with Brexit.
The cover displays the following politicians; Nicola Sturgeon (Scotland's prime minister), David Cameron (Britain's prime minister), Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage who were prominent leave campaigners.
Already knowing about the views of 'The Big Issue', it is very obvious that they would be against the idea of Brexit and they express this by using the politicians in a mocking form by using an inter-textual approach and replacing the ABBA members heads with theirs. The reason they could've done this is because ABBA was a Swedish band who were very popular in Britain in the 1970's and you could say that the EU really brings together Britain and Europe the same way ABBA did.
They have also associated famous song lyrics with a politician which also corresponds with the referendum. Nicola Sturgeon says "Breaking up is never easy, I know" this quote links well to the idea that if the UK leave the EU, Scotland will then be able to leave the UK meaning she gets something beneficial from Brexit. David Cameron has the quote "Knowing me, knowing EU" which is a play on the word 'you' again supporting the idea that 'The Big Issue' doesn't take the referendum seriously.
The cover includes gold, glitter floor where they stand upon. You could say it could just be a dance floor, however the connotations behind the gold could represent wealth and glamour. This detail could imply that if we were to leave the EU politicians like them may barely be affected by Brexit compared to the general public.
Overall, 'The Big Issue' has painted the idea of Brexit in a very negative light so that they can persuade you with more of a bias perspective. This is a good example because when you deconstruct the cover you can pick out all the ways they get their messages across.
Another magazine cover we could deconstruct is from 'Q' magazine where their focus is more towards the music industry.
From this magazine cover you can first see Jay-Z who is a very famous rapper and music producer meaning that this issue could concentrate on rap and hip hop, or even maybe new artists who are now on his label.
Another feature of the cover which is almost as prominent is the 'Q' logo. This allows us to instantly identify what magazine it is when purchasing. The typography of the cover is mainly red and from the colour theory post, red could symbolise importance. With many names printed in red shows that they are famous and are special features of the magazine. The font is also in a plain bold theme allowing words to be easily identified when reading above of the large image.
To conclude this post, I have found that magazines can hold a lot of implications if you pick apart various features and how they lay out on the page. Different magazines have different ways of getting viewers to purchase their product as well as appealing to their interests and this is done by colours and images.
I explored social, cultural and political context within 'The Big Issue' magazine, looking at different articles to observe how they report. As we already know, this particular magazine is not mainstream and mainly liberal, left wing, focusing on socialism whilst also promoting labour and liberal democrats. 'The Big Issue' is known for challenging the authority and being somewhat blunt so that it can fit in niches in the market.
The first article I read about was 'David Bailey: King's Cross Revisited'.
The idea was to photograph homeless people in King's Cross, London; where it had been discovered that it had been transformed by vast investment. What he had found was that the government has shown a lack in strategy in preventing and tackling homelessness. David Bailey described his findings as "an air of simmering misery and menace" showing that this is an important matter that
shouldn't be swept under the rug.
The second article was titled 'Will the poorest be better off after Brexit?'.
'YES'
Patrick Minford
Chair of Economists for Free Trade "The fall in the cost of living will benefit lower-income households"
The article explains that Brexit may have a positive impact on the homeless as it may support them and keep them living in good conditions. It suggests that the fall in the cost of living will benefit them because they spend a large proportion of their income on food and rent, of which will fall substantially. Patrick Minford (pictured above) believes that there will be economic benefits from Brexit of which will positively impact those in poor conditions.
Semiotics are signs and symbols and the interpretation it holds. I will discuss what denotations and connotations are and how they differentiate, as well as giving examples of signs and symbols applying what they can be interpreted as.
A denotation is the obvious meaning of the signifier or sign, compared to a connotation which is any other meaning that isn't that obvious. An example of this would be a 'tree'.
Denotation: A tree is spelt T-R-E-E, it has a trunk and branches which grow leaves.
Connotation: A tree provides us with what we need to live, also meaning that a tree could represent life with the way it grows over time.
Signs and symbols can be anything from a word to an image. The can be split into two labels, the signifier; which is the physical form that can be seen or heard and there is what is signified, this is the meaning of the form. Signs and symbols are all down to interpretation and vary depending where you're from, how you were brought up, personal links or what has been directly taught, all of these factors can alter our understanding of signs.
Using the same example of the tree, in this instance the word 'tree' would be the signifier as it what is being seen or heard. The actual tree recognised which is pictured mentally is what is being signified as it is the concept behind the word.
Another example could be the word 'rose' being the signifier, whereas the actual rose is what is signified. However the words passion, death or love could also be what's signified as it is a connotation of the word 'rose'.
So far during this part of the course we have looked at many magazines, but one we have focused on a lot is 'The Big Issue'.
This magazine is a charity magazine which is sold by the homeless throughout the week. Inside the magazine they like to address and deal with important issues that are occurring today in society. Their perspective is usually always from a socialist point of view to show that they are for the people and want to express their opinions in a way that feels honest and trustworthy to the general public.
The whole magazine brand has offered opportunities for people in poverty and severely struggling by allowing them to contribute to sales and making a job out of it to support themselves. With the amount of help and support 'The Big Issue' receives, it has boosted their sales to over 82,000 copies sold every week.
Representation is the way particular groups are re-presented/portrayed in the media. This can pass on various ideologies through the different forms of media, this could be done with imagery, words, colours and editing. The media has control over what is represented in the media as they can choose what is exposed and what is not, however we also have control because we have the ability to choose how we respond to these representations.
The main categories that are often targeted in the media are age, ethnicity, sexuality, gender and regional and national identity. With these categories, many industries have a vast selection of ways to approaching them so that whatever they are advertising appeals to that specific audience.
It is important that representation is broad and that every person is included in some sort of way depending on what the media company wants to portray. The way they may do this may seem very bias to one person but relevant to another but to be able to strongly influence an audience they need to look at situations in a particular ideological or value perspective.
To explore representation is more depth, we conducted a small observation to support the ideas of representation. We typed in a category on Google Images and we would gather similar features which related to certain stereotypes to see if there was a correlation in the way these categories were seen to the way they are thought of in reality.
The first category we looked at were Londoners. Being from London you tend to experience a very different characters so it can be difficult to place them under the same label, but looking on Google we have concluded a few things.
The positives were that we are a very diverse society who show responsibility for others especially through societal crises. Due to other diverse nature we have become a very cultured community who take pride in many of the celebrations that have been brought into the city which also connects well with individuals having a lot of confidence in self expression.
Some of the pictures did however put us in a negative light with the idea that in the city, because we are so busy inclined with our 'professional' lives that we have become secluded and disconnected from the people around us for example, the homeless, our streets and small local businesses.
Another category we researched were teenagers as it seems fitting. What we found that was quite positive, were that a majority of the images showed them to be quite happy and open about self expression. This was a bit surprising as I had assumed there would be images of rebellious kids and technology and even though i know that isn't entirely true in reality, I suppose that the idea is just the media planting stereotypes into my head.
The negatives were again a little shocking as there was a severe lack of diversity in ethnicity and gender whilst the superiority of the images being of white females. We had also discovered that a lot of the pictures were of the teens taking pictures or how they would look with their friends. Even though they seemed happy their behaviour seemed forced giving the idea of insecurity. Although the teens looked a little conceited taking pictures in a lot of the images, there could also be an element of vulnerability when being around this age.
Colour is an important factor when it
comes to media as it has the possibility of altering how viewers interpret what
their seeing as well as how they respond to it. When working with colours it
helps by know the different ways colours can be manipulated to express
different meanings.
To start with the basics, primary
colours are the backbone of every other colours this consists of Red, Blue and
Yellow. These hues can't be created by mixing any other colours together.
Secondary colours are colours that can
only be created by combining pure primary hues.
Tertiary colours are created when you mix
a primary colour and the nearest secondary colour.
Complementary colours are colours on
opposite ends of the wheel which is useful when something needs a more vibrant
feel to it. Even though pairs like these are good if you want something to
stand out they are don't work well when it comes to text.
Analogous Colours are more harmonious as the work
well because it uses the colours next to each other to be used in more serene
and comfortable designs. Usually they work with one colour being dominant, a
second being a support and then the third being an accent with either black,
grey or white.
Lastly, there are triad colours which
are simply colours that are evenly spaced around the colour wheel creating a
vibrant palette with carefully balanced colours.
When it comes to using colours, it isn’t
just what colours go with it, but also what the individual colour’s meaning is.
Depending on what message you are trying to perceive, you need to use the right
colour with the right connotations.
