Creative Critical Reflection - AICE Media Studies

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

Question 1

For our magazine, we didn't originally intend to represent a certain social group or issue. We originally wanted to just create a fun-filled product that anyone could enjoy. However, we did end up creating a product that attracts a few different groups of people. One of these types of consumers is artists, chefs, and gardeners who have a passion for the topics featured in our magazine. Our theme focuses mainly on creative home ideas, therefore angled towards people who enjoy that topic and are knowledgeable about the theme. Additionally, people who have time to enjoy our magazine are another audience group for our magazine.

Therefore, another social group represented in our magazine is people who work from home or spend the majority of their day at home. Since there is a variety of projects and articles in our magazines that are about DIY crafting ideas, anyone who wants to pursue the suggestions in the articles should probably have enough time to do so. Many people who a job that allows them to work at home, are full time parents, or are retired and have plenty of free time to do fun crafting ideas are the main type of people we consider our target audience. A final group of people we consider main consumers of our product are people who may not have experience with arts and crafts, cooking, or landscape decor but want to practice and learn more about it.

One way my partner's magazine and mine were different in using conventions is my partner used her main feature article photo in a way that stretched it across the page like a header. Mine however, uses the main photo on the side of the title. This was meant to distinguish between a crafting article like my partner wrote and a cooking article like the one I wrote.

Our magazine is great for this since we have a variety of types of crafting ideas throughout our magazine, many that are very simple and easy to understand. This means they are great for beginners or people of any skill-set. Overall, our magazine represents and targets a few different social groups, the main ones being people with a passion for our magazine theme, people with the time and effort to pursue arts and crafts, or anyone who wants to learn more through the articles in our magazine.

How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

Question 2

Our magazine is able to connect our target audience because it features a variety of articles that are enjoyable for artists of all skill levels. This means that regardless of one's experience in crafting, cooking, or gardening they should be able to understand the article or at least be interested in the topics. Additionally, we plan to create numerous social media pages. This will allow consumers to stay up to date with out project ideas and even allow them to further understand the crafting ideas. We could use websites such as Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube to create videos or step-by-step instructions to further explain our popular article topics. Also, the use of social media will allow users to be further exposed to our product and cause them to be more interested in our magazine. This will increase revenue.

Some methods we could use for distribution of real paper products would be through mailing directly to subscribers' homes or on the shelf in various grocery stores and other shops. Additionally, working hard to increase the appeal of articles and photos featured on the cover pages of our products would attract more new customers and increase our number of subscribers. This would not only increase revenue overall, but also allow us to see what types of cover photos and article topics attract the most amount of consumers and which ones don't.

One way our magazine would engage with audiences is to use coupons throughout our issues relating to crafting, cooking, or gardening products. These featured products could also be specifically used in the article topics such as a certain type of advertized paint that is utilized in a certain craft in the magazine for further promotion.

Additionally, stores such as Michael's and other crafting/ cooking stores could be used as possible places to seel our magazine issues. This would be a viable method of distribution becuase anyone shopping in these stores would have a passion or talent for crafting, cooking, or even gardening. Overall, our use of social media and intriguing article topics should attract and connect to the most consumers in our target audience.

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

Question 3

Throughout the creation of this product, both my partner and I improved our design skills, writing abilities, but most importantly our production skills. This was through lots of research about our genre topic and different production and distribution methods used by magazines similar to ours. Additionally, we both improved in our techniques used in creating the overall design of our cover page, table of contents, articles, and instructional sections within the articles. For example, after research of magazine companies such as Good Housekeeping, Better Homes and Gardens, and HGTV Magazine, we discovered that the majority of their cover page designs used features such as having a professional font for their title, using different solid colored shapes behind their text captions to allow the text to stand out more. They also decided to utilize a cover photo that a central focal point that easily attracts viewers. Bright colors were also used to make the title page more appealing and eye catching. We incorporated all of these techniques in our title page and throughout our TOC and articles pages. In addition to research of similar products to our project, we were able to develop our production skills through trial and error, testing what we though looked the best, what didn't work, and how to fix it to make it look better or more professional. This was done a lot on our cover pages as we changed our cover photos, the color and font of our title name, article captions, and the layout of those captions as well. Overall, the use of extensive, educational research and trial and error allowed us not only to perfect the look of our cover pages, TOC's, and article pages but also to improve our production skills in this project area.

How did you integrate technologies - sophoware, hardware and online - in this project?

Business Model

Question 4

Throughout our project, we utilized various forms of technology and computer programming such as Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word, Photoshop, editing in the iPhone 7 photos application, and research through Google Chrome. In Microsoft Publisher, we designed and laid out our cover page, TOC, and article page drafts. This software allowed us to edit the positioning, font styles, and overall layout of each page. In Microsoft Word, I setup my flat plan. This software allowed me to type in various text boxes and relocated the different titles or page labels within the flat plan. The software also allowed me to stay more organized than other methods.

In Photoshop, we both used this app to not only edit the quality of our photos, but also start the beginning drafts of our cover pages, TOC's, and article pages before starting the next draft in Publisher. This method allowed us to professionally alter out photos and repeatedly readjust our beginning drafts. In the iPhone 7 photo application, we used simple photo editing techniques to increase the saturation and contrast in numerous photos to make them stand out more and look more visually appealing.

Finally, in Google Chrome, we both used this search engine to perform extensive research and learn as much as we could about magazine layout, production, and distribution. This helped us do the best we could in all aspects of the project, especially distribution, which neither of us had much experience in. Overall, the assistance of technology incorporated in various aspects of the project helped us create an exceptional product.