Marketing Workshop

In today's lesson we recieved a visit from the marketing department to demonstrate how the Orpington College prospectus was design. We were given main points to take notes of, however as we would be using this information in refence to our own magazine covers it was recommended to take record of almost everything said.

The most recent college prospectus had a very differnt design to the previous years, due to the fact that it was to now tie into the house style used by Bromley College. House style is the general layout that each issue of a magazine should follow with every issue. This includes aspects such as layout, colour scheme, type face and types of images. For instance, the image above shows a double page spread from Eco Magazine. Therefore, the magazine follows that layout for all interviews in each issue.

We were shown different mock-up boards of pages for the next college prospectus. Mock-up boards are professionally presented pages of the magazine before they are published. It includes all the images, text, mastheads, straplines and colour filters. The difference between a mock-up and a story board is that a story board is the initial ideas and can be hand drawn or created on the computer. The storyboard doesn't need to be professional as ideas may change through the developement process. Storyboards aren't only used in magazines, but all avenues of media, ie. television adverts, comic books, cartoons, etc.

The target audience is one of the main factors that needs to be taken into consideration. For example, the college prospectus not only needs to attract people of 14 to 19 to the college, but also mature students and parents and carers. Therefore issues such as reading age need to be adressed correctly, ie. the reading age used for the college prospectus is 12 to 13, so it is therefore easy to understand across the whole age range. There are also certain rules about publications that are available to the general public that are specified in the Disability Discrimination Acts 1995 and 2005. For example, for someone who has a visual impairment, the design of the prospectus should not stop them from understanding what the prospectus is trying to say. For instance, you cannot put text straight on top of images, as this may make the text harder to read. Therefore, a colour filter should be placed under the text so that there is a a constant background behind the text.

The type of images used are very important and should be consistant throughout the publication. For example, the college prosectus conecentrated on student based photograpghs, whch are usually medium close-up shots. Of course, to ensure that no potential students feel excluded, students of various different races, religions and of both sexes were used.

Abode InDesign is used the college publishing team to edit and arrange the layout of all college publications, as it is easier to stick to the house stlye. For example, one page can be edited to have particular margins and text boxes in specific places. This page can then be duplicated so that the different pages in the publication have relatively the same layout, with only slight differences. This encourages consistancy, therefore the reader can be sure that they are following the same article and avoid confusion. Photoshop is used to edit the different photographs, ie the sizes, contrast, crop and any possible filter colours.

Ihave until half term, around 4 weeks, to complete this prelimenary task, whereas the marketing time doesn't usually have more that a few days.

This is an example of 'house style'. I have used Glamour magazine to illustrate how publishers aim to produce a house style that is recognisable and generally consistant throughout each magazine.

Glamour's house style includes a masthead that is a bright colour and stands out from the background, but is behind the main image, which is traditionally a full body shot of a female celebrity. The image is then surrounded by various strap lines, which all happen to be in sans serif font, but in various colours and sizes.

Semiology

The aim of yesterdays lesson was to understand the meaning of Semiology and how to apply it to the various different analysis that we should conduct throughout the course.

The definition of semiology is: the study and interpretation of signs and their meanings. In this case, I will be using semiology to carry out textual analysis, which is decipering text to gain meaning from it.

A sign is anything that has meaning and can be broken down into two parts: the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the form that the sign takes, ie. a picture or sound and the signified can be both denotation (the common agreed meaning) and connotation (my individual interpretation).

For example, above is a picture of a lion therefore the signifier is a picture. The signified denotation is the agreed meaning of this sign is an mystical creature called a dragon. The signified connotation is that this sign leads me to think of power and strength.

Semiology is used heavily throughout the publishing industry to visually indicate an idea or theme.

Other vocabulary that is included in this subject are:

• iconic: look like, what they represent, ie. a photograph of you
• symbolic/ arbitrary: meaning must bhe culturally learned, therefore they may not look like waht they are meant to represent, eg. a no entry sign.
• indexical: have a connection to what they represent and are suggestive rather than directly resembling, eg no smoking sign, crucifix.

These words are all used to analyse/ describe signs.

Student Photographs

For Wednesday's lesson, each member of my AS Media class was given a camera to take head shots of students around the college. We were also given a sheet of the different types of shots that we needed, which were:

• MCU of person standing up


• MCU of person sitting down
  
• MCU of person outside (with background)


• MCU of person inside (with background)


• MCU of person in high angle shot


• MCU of person in low angle shot

I have uploaded the photographs I have taken onto my Flickr account and will be soon analysing my favourite image that I will use for the cover of my college magazine.

This is a medium close up shot of a college member of staff, however, I close this image as she could easily pass for a student.

There is very good lighting in this shot, which means that I will not have to lighten it in any photo editing software.
I have two options regarding cropping this image; I could either leave it as is, with the subject slightly to the right, or I could crop it so that the subject is in the direct centre. However, if I chose to crop this photograph, I risk not having any space to put any text, including a masthead and any sub topics.
I could also blank out the background and make it one block colour. However, I like the background and feel that it reflects the fact that this is a college photograph and the college atmosphere.
I also like the fact that the subject is wearing a tag, which is exclusive to college staff.
I could edit this to get rid of any flaws on her skin and reduce the shine.

Analysis of Magazine Covers

Over the weekend, I neated up my Flickr account by deleting all the covers that weren't music related or that were from the same publishing company. This reduced my number of covers from 17 to 7. This means that I can spend more time analysising each cover in more detail, rather that having numerous covers that haven't been analysed in depth.

I will also be using the correct analytical language which has been provided on a hand out. For example, what I would usually call the "title", I should now call the "masthead". Smaller headlines should be refered to as straplines.

I also concentrated on magazines of the same musical genre, ie. hip-hop and r'n'b so i could therefore expect some similarities. However, I ensured that I chose magazines from different countries (United Kingdom and Unitied States) so I could point out the differences between different cultures that the way that they set out covers and displays.

This is an example of a cover from Vibe, which is an American music magazine that concentrates of the hp hop and r'n'b genres of music. Vibe uses this house style for the covers of all its magazines, which includes a popular artist, group of artists or figure/s in the music in the music industry as the central image. The background tends to be plain as to draw attention to the main image. The type face is bold and sans-serif, therefore very simple, however, the size of the text is enough to draw the attention of the reader.

The lighting of the main image has been edited so that at places it is so bright that it blends into the background. It is also quite a sophoisticated image, because the subject is dressed in a suit, which is quite unusual considering his profession. However, the fact that he is not dressed properly, ie. his top botton is not done up and his bow tie is undone, projects a relaxed atmosphere to the audience.

The masthead is behind the main image, however because the magazine is quite popular, the publishers can be sure that the regular audience will be able to identify the magazine regardless.

Magazine Covers

The aim of today's media studies lesson was to research magazine covers using the internet. This meant saving magazine cover images from Google Images and then uploading them to an image hosting site called Flickr.
Flickr allows it's users to save images to personal accounts and then write descriptions and edit them. However, to set up a Flickr account I needed a Yahoo id, which I didn't have, therefore before I could start researching into magazine covers I needed to sign up to Yahoo and get yet another email address. I did this without any problems and started downloading as many images as I could before the lesson ended.
The only problem was finding appropriate covers that weren't too similar and were from different magazines. I thought it was best to focus on covers with well known celebrities, therefore they are easier to relate to and analyse. I also wanted to get magazines covers from various different genres, ie. fashion, music, general interests etc, yet most of the is an example of the type of covers that i found.

The next thing I need to do is critically analyse each magazine cover, commenting on font, colour, image, composition and lighting.