Evaluation Question 7

Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking at these two products it is easy to see that there is a much more advanced level of editing skills shown in the Magazine Cover than in the Preliminary Task.

What have I learned while creating this product?

Between the production of these two products I have learned a lot about Photoshop including using other programs to create a base image which can be edited (Adobe Illustrator for the Grid). I have learned how to use blending options like overlays, inner / outer glow, chroma keying, colour balance tweaking(clearly seen on my models' face), using real-life lighting to match the style/colour scheme of my product, using layers to my advantage, naming layers for easy navigation and management of my product while editing, and other miscellaneous things like style and colour scheme continuity / consistency, colour composition (what colours work well together), chroma keying, and use of layers to my advantage.

How have I developed my skills or understanding?

I have developed my understanding of the process of creating a product like this and the difficulty of it due to the huge effort required beyond just image editing. Finding a model, arranging a photo shoot, working with your model and establishing clear communication to give them a clearer understanding of what you want, getting the right images, getting the lighting right in your photo shoot, choosing the right mise en scene, working with and taking advantage of what resources I had both at college and at home (e.g.  the props and equipment such as the aviator sunglasses which had been on top of my chest of drawers for years after getting them as a joke back in high school, the green screen room, high-grade cameras, overhead lighting with customizable colours, costumes), managing my time, organizing my work, and disciplining myself to work when I could've procrastinated and wasted valuable time.

What would I change about my product?

Honestly, I would've changed the genre which I based my product on. The genre was extremely niche and it was unbelievably difficult finding information about the genre and the artists as it is very experimental and bandcamp / soundcloud based rather than being a distributed, professional genre of music. Plus, a more well established genre would have pre-existing magazines and similar content to actually reference and copy styles and elements from, rather than having to make like hard for myself and reference much more obscore things as well as creating my own themes. The entire project would've been much easier to complete had I chosen the EDM or Classic Rock genres for example.

Was it useful carrying out the preliminary task and why?

Carrying out the preliminary task at the start of the year was in my opinion, hugely helpful to me personally as I gained fairly decent Photoshop skills during media production at high school during years 10 and 11, through out 2011, 2012 and 2013. I had not used Photoshop much since late 2012 and this was approximately 2 years later in late 2014. Photoshop had become alienated to me and the existing knowledge that I had during high school couldn't hold a candle to my confidence and ability in photoshop now. The preliminary task was a silly image, but it helped me re-acquaint myself with Photoshop's layout, get used to the changed in CS6 compared to CS5 which I used in high school, and it was generally beneficial as well as educational for some of the basic techniques that I used in my magazine like the lasoo tool, burn & dodge, blending options like glow, and more.

What skills and knowledge did I learn in order to produce a music magazine?

While I've mentioned some of these in the other questions, the main skills and other things that I've learned throughout the production of this music magazine are:

1. Intermediate Photoshop tools including:

• The Colour Range Select Tool
• Blending Options
• Creating Mask Channels to apply Effects and Filters to
• the Magnetic Lasso Tool
• The Colour Dropper Tool
• The Transform Tool including Aspect Ratio Lock and Skew

2. I have learned how to organize a photo shoot and communicate with a model in order to get the best out of a photo shoot.

3. I have learned how to use lighting and colour composition in my magazine to create a visually appealing image and colour scheme.

4. I have learned how to use GoAnimate!

5. I have learned how to use Blogger

6. I have learned how to experiment with settings and tools in Photoshop in order to discover effects and visuals which I like and incorporate them into my design for an image (notable the blending options and gradients)

7. Finally, I have gained a greater understanding of the process of creating a music magazine and the importance of time management when creating something requiring such a wide variety of work to complete it.

Evaluation Question 6

Question 6: What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Creating this product has taught me a lot of about the technologies involved with making it and also with some not directly involved with creating a media product.

1. Blogger.com

I have never used a Blog before and rarely used anything on my Google+ account beyond YouTube. Creating this product and my evalutaion as well as adding notes and updates via my Blogger account has been educational in that I know know how to use blogger and I see that there are many benefits to basing your work on a blog to act as both a professional diary and provides a timeline of your work and pacing to reference for self-improvement or other reasons. I have also learned how to insert multimedia like video clips, images and links to my blogs, learned how the layout works, and how to copy and share links to your posts via it as an easy way to distribute and show my work.

2. Surveymonkey.com

Another thing that I have used as a direct result of creating this media product is surveymonkey.com, which has been great for collecting opinions and suggestions for my product. I first created a survey for what name to use out of the multiple I had come up with, with EXOSKELETON being the one. Then I acquired general feedback through another survey which gave me insight into the target audience and people's opinions + knowledge of the genre.

3. Adobe Photoshop

I have definitely learned the most about this program than I have anything else. While I have pre-existing knowledge of Photoshop from high school and personal use, I have learned a lot of new things about the program, colour range selection, alpha channels, blending options, use of noise, aspect ratio locked transforming, skewing, and other miscellaneous things were all previously unknown to me before creating this product. One example of something harnessing new ideas that I've used is the method of putting lightning onto the front cover model's glasses quickly and easily.

I duplicated the layer of him, used the lasso tool to cut out his sunglasses lenses, revealing the lenses on the layer behind, then made the back layer partially transparent and placed the lightning between the two layers. This is also why the grid layer behind can be seen.

Another thing I have learned to use in Photoshop is noise layers, which were used on the front cover and the Double Page Spread. As you can see, there appears to be a star field behind the neon grid. This is in fact a layer of random dots of noise on a black background which creates an effect similar to the night sky. 

4. Adobe Illustrator

Prior to this assignment I had never even opened Adobe Illustrator before, but a youtube tutorial harnessed it to create a black grid which I would use for the geometric grid in photoshop for my cover and double page spread. I now have a slightly increased understanding of Adobe Illustrator and it's uses, but not to a large extent.

5. YouTube

Creating this product and looking for tutorials on how to do many of the things done in Photoshop and Illustrator lead me to YouTube where I discovered that YouTube is a great source of information including tutorials on virtually anything including doing things in Photoshop. I found an especially helpful Tutorial which detailed how to create a retro 80's Sci-Fi logo using elements very similar to those of my front cover. I used the same techniques but but applied them differently to distinguish my cover from it.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

I discussed this briefly in Question 4.

Firstly, the majority of my target audience are gamers, namely those who have played Hotline Miami or anything similar and have gotten into this genre through such means, after that comes general listeners of the genre without having played the game and who have gotten into the genre through either recommendation, musical diversity, or through internet streaming sites . These are probably less common than the gamers but still prominent as gamers spend a lot of time on the internet and it's likely that people on the internet who don't play video games have friends who play video games, linking the two things.

These two sub-groups of my audience make up most of my Primary Audience.

My secondary audience consists mainly of people who were alive during that time and so these people need to be addressed by true retro 80s elements of the genre.


In summary my audience most likely consists of the following:

Primary:

1. Males
2. Gamers
3. Sci-Fi fans
4. Action movie fans
5. Electronica, EDM, Dubstep, New Wave, Synth, or Drum & Bass fans
6. fans of 80's music or memorabilia

Secondary:

1. Females
2. people alive during the 1980's

How does my magazine appeal to these people collectively?

Males:

The magazine is clearly male-oriented. The colour scheme, the hard edge of the magazine's elements like fonts and it's imagery as well as the genre and it's dominantly male prosumer base (Mitch Murder, Lazerhawk, Mega Drive, Jordan F, Perturbator, Carpenter Brut, M.O.O.N to name a few are all young/middle aged males). The mise en scene of the magazine including the model and the artists shown are male and there are no females in the magazine. This is partly due to the fact that I could not find a female model for it as I would've liked to to help appeal to my secondary female audience and to provide gender equality in the magazine to avoid controversy or backlash.

Gamers:

The magazine is mainly intended to appeal to gamers as the largest consumer base of this genre knows about it through video games like Grand Theft Auto V and Hotline Miami's soundtracks. Gamers are not gender specific but it is a well established fact that gamers (especially hardcore indie gamers) are predominantly male. I have not provided any particular documented research into this as I felt that it was not necessary due to personal online gaming experience over the course of my life being adequate to confirm this statement.

I have made the magazine appeal to gamers by advertising a Nintendo Entertainment System and Power Glove to be won on the front cover and by theming the magazine heavily on the Hotline Miami game with use of neon colours, an image in the contents page of my model holding a pistol and the palm trees on the cover.

Action Movie Fans:

Similar to the gamer appeal, the use of colours, terminator-style clothing on my front cover model and Lazerhawk model on the contents age, my model posed holding the pistol in 'taking cover' pose and the palm trees are all linked to the stereotypical 80s Action Movie.

Sci-Fi Fans:

Also similar to the above two, the main appeal of the magazine to this social group is the excessive use of Grids imitating vector graphics, which is strongly associated with this genre and with the 80s seen in this artwork:

Also the planetary body in the contents page is intended for Sci-Fi appeal, and the use of stars in both the front cover and the warped star field imitating the iconic hyper-drive of the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars

Seen much more clearly in this Work in Progress version of the Double Page Spread, the warped stars stretched outwards, space clouds, and galaxy seen on the top-right of the background are very similar to the visuals seen during Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope when the Millennium Falcon goes into hyperspace.

Electronica, EDM, Dubstep, New Wave, Synth, or Drum & Bass fans:

This is a music magazine and amidst all of the themes associated with gaming, action movies and sci-fi it can be difficult to maintain the establishment that this is a a music magazine.

In order to appeal to fans of similar music genres, I have made all talk besides the games console up for grabs solely about music and artists. The front page is dominated by the best album reviews, "TOP 15 SONGS OF 2014", and the 'exclusive interview' with LAZERHAWK "The man behind the music". This helps to secure it as a music magazine to anyone who would see it and my surveymonkey research confirms this.

Fans of 80s Music or Memorabilia + People alive during the 1980's:

These two are closely linked and are addressed for the same reasons. The NES and the double page spread are intended to build the nostalgia factor of the era which is the magazine's source of appeal for these two social groups. 

The cluttered style, wacky new-wave themed shapes, unnecessary '80'S' written in neon quartz, and over the top use of bright colours appeal to the true nostalgic and anti-conventional style of 1980's Pop media. This should be identifiable to these two social groups the most.

Females:

While the magazine and genre are overall male themes as they make up the primary audience, I felt that it was important to keep the magazine somewhat gender neutral in a way that while it would still appeal to a male audience more, a female wouldn't feel out of place reading it for her gender alone. In order to do this, I adopted the sci-fi theme of star fields and computer graphic grids as these do not identify to a gender. I also avoided implementing any female sex-appeal imagery in the magazine as not to make it appear to be objectifying women, as this would push the magazine further into male exclusiveness and arguably make the magazine appear misogynistic.

Evaluation Question 4

Question 4: Who would be the right audience for your media product?

I mentioned my reader audience in Question 4 and explained how I believe that my magazine will likely appeal to a 'Primary' and 'Secondary' audience. Teenagers and young adults (primary), and some middle aged adults(secondary).
This is because the 80s theme may appeal to people who were young during that era, but would also appeal to the fans of the genre around my age, who are by majority also the prosumers of this genre of music too.

I have established this dual age range from research previously carried out into the genre and people's opinions of it (https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VHPSP8T) as well as any existing products based around the genre. The most significant thing that I found relating to synthwave and it's pseudo-80s feel was the hugely successful indie video game 'Hotline Miami' and it's sequel.

I put my existing knowledge of the game's popularity and it's male oriented but age varied player base and created my product to appeal to the same group (Males roughly between the ages of 10-40) and split that age group into my Primary and Secondary audience groups (Primary being 10-30 and Secondary being 30-40)

This large age range is one of the reasons that I chose this music genre to cover in my magazine. Even if the genre appeals much more to the primary, younger generation and I have reflected this in the magazine. The younger generation is especially appealed to in my front cover:

As can be seen here, the lightning bolt on the sunglasses, the NES up for grabs, and the overall neo-futuristic aesthetic of the front cover is heavily influenced by video games and Sci-Fi. These are two things that the younger teen and 20s generation who would be able to relate to. The artists mentioned on the left are both modern synthwave artists and album covers, distancing the magazine from people of the actual 80s generation. The only things which may be relatable by the older generation / secondary audience is the dress code of my cover model (Ben) and the vintage Console up for wins. Everything about the cover is exclusively catered to the primary audience.

On the contrary, the Double Page Spread is designed to have more appeal to the Secondary audience:

The overall layout of this image is less intense and deliberately overly-cluttered with nonsense and unnecessary elements like the second LazerHawk logo, Registration Plate Style font on the masthead (top left), the unnecessary filters on the artist, wacky and New Wave styled text container along with the unnecessary use of angling on almost every element of the DPS all exist to create a more authentic and cheesy 1980s aesthetic rather than the pseudo-80s Hotline Miami (video game) influenced futuristic feel of the genre. The random box saying '80's' in neon red quartz font is jsut there to emphasize the decade of which the genre and magazine are based even more, so that someone who has never heard of the genre nor the magazine can pick this up, take one glance at the page, and instantly be able to summarize what they are both about (the 80's).

After researching people's opinions on the genre of varied age and gender groups, I found that there was still a fairly large  female player base of the video game and one female which I sent the survey monkey to enjoyed the music genre and said that they would recommend the magazine. This means that the genre and magazine should NOT by exclusively for men and should in fact appeal to both genders, despite still catering more towards a male audience than a female one.

As the things associated with the genre include sci-fi, hollywood action movies, and male oriented things, I followed the visual base and Sci-Fi theme seen in the video for 'Accelerated' by Miami Nights 1984 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDBbaGCCIhk). As Science-Fiction is among the least gender-specific elements of the genre as opposed to women in swimsuits and other things associated with male-oriented sex appeal, I chose to theme the magazine around this as to keep it from being entirely gender-specific in it's appeal.

Evaluation Question 3

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

When considering what media institution might distribute my product and why, it is important to understand the genre and target audience of my product. My magazine is of a very niche and by majority unheard of genre (Synthwave/Retrowave). This means that any listener base would be notably small and specific, ruling out the magazine as a particularly wise investment in terms of moneymaking for a large publishing company such as Bauer Media, Dennis Publishing or Times Inc. Media (IPC Media).

While the genre does have potential to continue advancing in popularity, EXOSKELETON is still better suited to a small, independent publisher.

The Synthwave genre has never had it's own dedicated magazine before, making this magazine highly experimental and a risk to actually invest in and publish. This further deems it unsuitable for large-scale publishing by a popular publisher like those mentioned above.

When looking at other, similar small-time music magazines of similar genres such as Synth and Dubstep (which are both far more popular than synthwave), the Dubstep / Drum & Bass magazine 'Kmag' is published by a small independent company called 'Phoenix Publishing' and the experimental UK music magazine 'The Wire' actually has it's own independent publishing company, making it a self-publishing conglomerate that is vertically integrated. This suggests that the magazine had trouble finding publishing when it was founded in the 80s, likely due to the lack of independent publishers.

Therefore, given this research it is safe to say that it is highly unlikely that a large-scale publishing company would take on EXOSKELETON Magazine due to it's small if not negligible profits and fairly high chance of failing commercially. In fact, a small, independent publishing company such as Phoenix Publishing should publish my magazine, and in fact, given the genre's steady climb in popularity, if the magazine turned out to be a success, it could possibly be a wise choice for the magazine to vertically integrate and self-publish.

Evaluation Question 2

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product is intended to represent multiple social groups, but the most prominent social group associated with the 'synthwave' genre are male teenagers and young adults, namely 'hipsters' and gamers who are the largest and most active and internet-savvy listener base for this genre from my personal experience. This makes them the primary social group. The secondary social group that this magazine is intended to represent is the generation of people born during the 70s and 80s who experienced their youth during the 80s and early 90s. This generation is likely to now be in their 30s and 40s,

making it difficult to represent both while not deterring either. In order to represent the middle aged, male I featured an adult with grey hair and classic aviator sunglasses on the front cover and in the contents page. Also, the opportunity to win the Nintendo Entertainment System was an element used to appeal to and represent both social groups as the Primary social group contains a lot of collectors and enthusiasts of these old consoles, and the Secondary social group may have at some point owned one as a kid or teenager, appealing to their nostalgia factor. the magazine's appeal to the older Secondary generation is in nostalgia value which is how a link can be made with the current modern retro enthusiast generation (the Primary social group)

The magazine does conform to some stereotypes associated with the genre, mostly around the area of costume choice and other elements of the magazine like the use of red connotating both anger and lust, imagery like the star lit mountain with the neon writing on it much like the Hollywood sign - further linking the genre with Hollywood and action movies, and fonts notably the military vehicle font used on the "TOP 15" list top left of the magazine cover which is associated with war and action movies.

Furthermore, the model on the front cover is wearing a black leather jacket, has facial hair, and aviator sunglasses with a lightning bolt superimposed onto them. These represent the potential audience and the social groups associated with the genre as stereotypical hot-blooded males like the Hollywood action movie heroes and anti-heroes of the 80s, namely Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Terminator movies.

Finally, in the other two pages, I have represented artists 'Lazerhawk' and 'Mitch Murder' with students of a similar age groups to what their real life counter parts actually are which appeals to the primary audience more and represents them accurately.


In terms of economic status, this magazine represents no particular socio-economic groups. The representation of target audience of my magazine and the genre is neither particularly rich nor poor. While the representation may fall into the working/middle class area as a result of this, the target audience is assumed to be relatively economically stable and not in poverty; equally, they are not assumed to be particularly wealthy.


Summary: Summarized, my target social groups are intended to be primarily middle class, teenage and young adult males who enjoy video games, action movies, and / or the 1980/1990s, as well as secondarily being middle class, middle aged adult males who also enjoy any of the above, but who also have a strong sense of nostalgia for that time period