My Masthead Analysis

Masthead Analysis

Camera Practice

School Magazine Analysis

Magazine Analysis

Music Magazines Conventions

• Most of the colour schemes used relate to the genre of music and target audience. An example is the Billboard front cover. It has a pink background and Katy Perry is wearing a flowery dress which indicates that it is aimed at girls and is not a rock magazine.
• All of the magazines have bold mastheads in colours that stand out. For example the classical magazine has a black background and a white title which connotes sophistication and simplicity.
• Most of the magazines have the artists/composers name in large writing to draw more attention to them and anchorage text about the artists is brighter to make it stand out. 
• 3 out of the 9 covers has black as the main colour but are completely different genres. The classic rock genre is the opposite to classical music but both have a black, white and silver/grey.
• All of the front covers have white somewhere on the page. White is a common colour to use because it stands out on most background colours and pops out to the reader to draw attention. 
• Every single one of the artists on the magazine covers are looking straight at the reader. This is called direct mode of address and it creates a relationship with the reader making the overall aesthetics more attractive and more eye catching.
• Over half of the covers have puff text to tell the reader what is in the magazine and encourage them to read it. 
• 4 of the female artists are using very seductive and dramatic gazes which could appeal more to men whereas the other 3 women look playful and friendly and very unintimidating, the Katy Perry cover especially. These poses do however represent the genre and style of the artists songs. On the other hand, the band on the classic rock front cover look very friendly and 'sweet' which does not represent the rock genre.

Useful technologies

Write a short reflective blog post about your findings on new technologies. Which technologies did you use? Which do you think may be useful to you in media studies?

The first new technology I used in Media Studies was Google Blogger. I used it to set up my blog write posts every time I want to upload something. In my opinion this will be the most useful technology because we use it every lesson to do coursework. It's very easy to use and once your blog is set up you can access it and edit it whenever you like. 

The next piece of technology I found useful was Flickr. Flickr is a website used to store and share images with people from all around the world. Most of the pictures look very professional and can be used regularly for my blog. You simply search a keyword, choose a photo, ask for permission and use it so the site is incredibly easy to use and navigate around. I can see myself using Flickr an awful lot over the next two years to make my blog look colourful but professional. 

The third website I looked at was Tubechop. Although I didn't understand the site at first, will a little exploring and wondering I discovered it is actually very easy to use. You have to find a video on YouTube and copy and paste the link into the search engine on Tubechop. Once the video is up you simply use the slide bar and the bottom of the screen to select the amount of video you want to keep. This will be very useful since videos are a good way to keep a blog interesting instead of using pictures all of the time. 

Next, I tried out Quizlet. I had briefly used Quizlet before but never really known how to use it properly. I messed around with the website, using the different links and options and found it very useful, not only for media. Quizlet lets you make your own set of flashcards for revision purposes so will be important when revising theory media studies. 

I also started to used PicMonkey which can be used to edit, touch-up and design images and colleges. This piece of technology will be incredibly useful in media later on in the course because you can make images more visually appealing and professional.

The last piece of technology I used was Thinglink. After playing around and getting used to the technology I found it very useful. It makes analyzing images much easier and more professional when it is on my blog because you can add annotations without arrows and text boxes sticking out everywhere and looking crowded and busy. I will definitely be using Thinglink in the future on my blog.