Task 3: Magazines & Audiences

Part 1: Glossary of terminology

Masthead- Iconic ( recognisable ) name of the magazine
Price- Price of magazine
Bar code- To scan magazine for price
Issue number/date- To tell readers when its came out and which issue it is
Main image- Directly related to the featured article
Plugs- Give away, enticing the reader to buy e.g. competition
Puff- The graphic design around the plug to draw in reader
Main cover line- Main story line on magazine
Pull quote from- A small direct quote pulled from inside the magazine
Serif font- A traditional font, also can be perceived as girly
Interview- A celebrity has gave an interview inside
Cover lines- Tells the audience a brief sentence about a story inside
Left third- Magazines are in thirds, the left third has most cover lines on it
Code- Interpretations through what we know ( stereotypes )
Conventions- Widely recognised way of doing things

Part 2: 500 word analysis on a magazine

The target audience for this magazine is women aged 18-30; I think this because Beyoncé is the main image and she is an iconic figure for strong, independent women. However I believe that this image portrays her in a different way as Beyoncé is standing in a shy stance, hiding behind her shoulder, which makes her look more venerable and girly. I believe this is done to link in with the cover line 'Beyoncé in the bed room' as she has let out all her secrets and therefore left her venerable so she posed in a similar way. It will also interest the target audience because they are normally interested about sex and that's way a lot of the cover lines are about it. Another point is that Beyoncé is aged 32 and is respected for being a good role model to younger people; she is all about doing things for herself and being independent which a lot of young girls aspire to be like. Also she hit fame when she was 16 so a lot of the target audience would have grown up with her music and her being in the news for being idolized as 'perfect'. Beyoncé in this photo is smiling which connotes that she is happy and attractive, making the target audience feel like they should, as a girl, be that way too.  

I think that the target audience for Cosmopolitan is for women who work in an office, admin or sales that is professional but still has that carefree glamorous side to it. The magazine is £3.50, which shows that the target audience must have a fairly well paid job to afford this every month. The iconic masthead 'Cosmopolitan' means 'familiar with and at ease in many different countries and cultures'; having this word as the title connotes that this magazine is aimed at someone who sees themselves as well cultured and well traveled like the women in the program 'Sex and the city'. Like the program this magazine is greatly about sex, glamorous life in the big city and shoes; this is because the topics are conventions of what the typical young women is interested in. Because the women see themseleves as 'cosmopolitan' it is a very effective masthead as it will be easy to recognise and therefore will be more popular. 

Also I think that the target audience is for heterosexual women because that is what Beyonce is and therefore they will be able to relate towards her lifestyle more. A code that this magazine is for women is that the front cover is filled with pretty pastel colours, such as pinks and oranges, which are stereotyped to be more feminine. Furthermore on the front cover there is a thematic link between the colours used and what month it is; they do this because the target audience want to know the current trends for the current weather and by looking at the magazine they can link the colors to the season. For example this magazine is for April which is in spring and the magazine has warm, pastel pinks and oranges which indicates to the reader that the weather is going to get warmer and clothes are going to get brighter. Serif font is also used on this cover because it is a tradiontal font that is recongised for being linked to magazine, it is also a style of font which looks 'girly' because it words curl.

Overall I believe alot of codes and conventions are used in this magazine to make it appeal to the target audience of young, working women who desire the glamerous life style as they regulary read about it. For this magazine to be sucessful the publishers had to include many ideologies of what the target audience would like for example: fashion, gosisp and lifestyle.

Task 2: Getting to know Blogger

Things you can do with Blogger:
-Customise your own design
-Publish your voice: uploading text, videos and pictures
-Simple-to-use interface: change fonts, adjust colour and alignment
-Saves automatically
-Spellcheck feature
-HTML editor: lets you customise your blog
-Free website
-Upload pictures and videos: you can order prints and organise photo's into albums
-Earn money: putting ad's onto your blog
-Develop your community: add a follow button
-Feedback from readers by leaving comments
-New post notifications: subscribe to blog feeds
-Simple ID: log into blogger with google accounts- gives you access to iGoogle , Google Mail etc.
-Language: 41 languages available
-Pages feature: make links
-Post on the go: blogger is available on phones
-Group blogging: create a team blog ( allowing multi bloggers to one blog )
-Third party applications: create your own app

'How I think Blogger will be useful for my coursework'

Blogger will be useful for my coursework because it hosts a multi media platform where pictures, text and videos can be uploaded. This will be very useful as it makes the tasks more interesting and shows I have a wider range of media knowledge. Blogger saves automatically which is very useful with doing course work because if students are in a rush or forget to save there work it will save automatically. Another useful point of blogger is that people can view your blog and leave comments so if the teacher wants to assess our work they can leave constructive feedback for us to work on. Blogging on the go could be handy if you don't have acess to a computer/laptop as it's easy to log in using your phone to do your work. Another great feature of blogger is spellcheck; this is useful because students do not want spelling errors in there coursework and spellcheck corrects there mistakes for them. Finally I believe that the way you can make links on blogger is an excellent feautre because if doing research students will be able to put a link up from the website they got there research from. Also if they make a refereance to a story or type of media on the internet; links can be useful to make points.

Do more...

From this video I have learnt how to embed powerpoint presentations onto my blog. Also I have learnt how to embed videos onto my blog:

I have also registered for Prezi and learnt the basics:

Task 1: Skills Audit

This sheet shows what I am able to do on computers, camera's and applications. It also shows what I am not so confident with such as Mac's because they are complicated. Also I have never had a blog so I am very new to it. Hopefully by the end of Media the area's ticket no will become yes due to lots of practise and widening my knowledge on different types of media.