Ancillary Task

Genre & Institutions

The main chosen genre for my website will be regional surf magazine. I have chosen this genre because it is the best style that represents and attracts my chosen target audience. In order for my website to be a success, I will conduct secondary research into pre existing magazine websites. I will be mainly looking for the common conventions, colour palettes, type of content and then also the main publishers who could in turn publish my website.

The main magazines I have researched and looked at are Carve magazine and surf girl, I like these websites because they are youthful, fun and stylish, they have a clear balance between text and images which represents my target audience's requirements for entertainment. This is also common  convention for surf magazines to have an equal balance of the content, however I want to create a web design that subverts the normal appearance of a regional magazine design.

Survey Monkey Results

The main target audience for my media product is 15-35, I chose this age bracket because my magazine focuses mainly on surfing and  sport and this is the primary age for athletes and sports personnel. From this survey I had the most responses from under 18's and the 33-41 group which is perfect for getting an accurate representation of what my target audience want to see within my magazine and what they would like to see on the advertising of it.

My magazine doesn't have a specific gender that I will be trying to reach however the majority of responses I got were from females, therefore the answers will be mainly from a female perspective, but also 32% of answers were from males so I won't have to adapt anything to suit both sexes.

I asked about the readers hobbies so that I can get a good understanding of the type of content I had to use in order to create a successful magazine. I also needed to know so that I can include different types of features that a typical regional magazine wouldn't typically include.

Once I had the general age of the people taking my survey, I wanted to ask which type of magazine was the most popular, this again was to help me include content from different genres to add a different style to my magazine. Two of the most popular answers were food, music and fashion therefore within my magazine I will try and include these and give my audience a better understanding of the type of food and music there are in Cornwall.

Once I had found out my target audience and the content they would like to see, I wanted to find out how they wanted me to lay it out. I asked my target audience which colour palette they would like to see throughout my magazine and the main response was that they wanted a grey, blue and white colour palette so this will be the main colours I will be using.

The features that would help sell my magazine the most would be offers and exclusives, competitions and information about other media platforms for my magazine. Therefore I will include these within my media product to attract a wider audience.

I also asked within my survey about the advertising for my magazine, I put out a question asking where my target audience mostly sees billboard magazines. I learnt that the most common places for a billboard advert are town centres, bus stops and service stations. I also asked what they would like to see on my billboard advert and they suggested that I included one interesting image of my magazine, brighter colours and detailed information about my magazine.

Lighting research

Surf photography is a hard genre of photography, it's solely dependant on natural lighting and this is forever changing. Photographers have to shoot in manual and change the setting for different waves and have to take in to account the position of the sun and whether or not they want sun leaks in the image. Most photographers only use manual settings so that they can easily adjust to the weather conditions and the ocean shift, they also say that they would rather underexpose rather than over expose as it is easier to correct during the editing process.

Typically a surf photographer would bring longer lenses, the most popular being the 600mm and then also they bring contrasting lenses of 70-200mm F/2.8 because that type of lens is extremely versatile and can adapt to pretty much any weather condition. Some photographers will bring fish eye lenses as they can fit in more of the location which will add to the overall image.

Photography research

Photography has come along way over the years and along with technological advances it has become more known for being creative within society. It is used in a lot of different ways by different types of people, estate agents use photography whilst selling houses, businesses use it to sell their product and it's used in everyday advertising so the demand for photographers and media creators are getting higher. Digital photography has also come a long way and now current technology makes it possible to take an image and then bluetooth print it which makes business even easier as before clients would have had a polaroid image taken and then would have to wait for it to be developed so to now be able to do all of this within the space of 5 minutes really shows how much the industry have progressed.

My magazine will mostly use sports photography as I will use images of people surfing. I chose this style because I felt like within the regional magazine industry there is a lack in sports editions therefore this issue/magazine would be a good seller and open up younger readers into this genre of magazine. I will take these images and edit them to make them look more creative as this is my style of the magazine I am creating.

Brian Bielmann is an award winning surf photographer and I will use his images to try and influence my own creativeness and I will look at his work for reference to lighting and image ideas. His images are very well lit even though he is outdoors, he also uses the weather conditions to either create a contrast with the sky and the subject of uses the sun beams to lighten and add texture to the image.

Pre-Existing billboards 

This coca cola billboard is just filled with the images of the product that they are selling, however this works because it is a very well known product and therefore it doesn't need any explanation. They use block colours to catch your eye with the font being one of the first ones that you see.

Again with the coca cola adverts they keep it simplistic but in a way that still visually appealing. They don't really have a narrative whilst creating these adverts but this works in a way that you see the product and then know what it's about. These adverts also don't contain any intertextuality or multi-media content which is a common convention of a billboard magazine.

This billboard for "vogue" magazine follows all of the conventions for a billboard magazine. It contains a copy of one the recent issues, includes images to make it visually pleasing and it also has intertextuality and explains how it is available on other media platforms such as a web address. It also uses block colours like all of the other billboards use, this is done in order for it to catch your eye as your walking past. I will loosely follow this within reference to making my own advert, however I am going to make mine look more creative as that is the style of my magazine.

Flat plans for the billboard advert

I decided to design 4 different versions of my billboard advert, I did this so that I could experiment with different layout styles, balance of text and images and simplistic form. Although I do like the middle top version, I also like the bottom right so I am going to try and combine elements from each of the designs to create one that is simplistic yet not too sparse of content. I also like the idea of the border going around the page that contains my magazine name multiple times. The bottom two design relate more to the layout of my contents page therefore I think this would be good because it links back to my magazine style. My billboard will have a target audience of the upper end of my age group. The website will appeal more to the lower section of my target audience so by having a contrast in advertising techniques for the difference in ages, I will be creating content that includes everyone. It fits the genre of my magazine as I will be taking the original conventions of billboard advertisements for magazine and I will re-vamp them so that the creative side of my magazine will be projected through this advert.

Genre and Institution Research

Genre

The common conventions of a billboard include things such as one main image that shows the audience what you are advertising. The layout is usually quite clean and tidy, nothing overlaps and this is to make it fully legible to the viewers. The image is predominately in the centre so that it is the first thing people look at when they look at your advert, they usually also include intertextuality such as other media platforms and viewing options. Depending on the genre of the magazine that they are advertising, the colour palette should relate to the style of your product and it should also be a colour palette that appeals to your target audience, this would also depend on the style of magazine. To keep the billboard advert looking tidy, you wouldn't typically find a lot of text on the page, instead the information would be made into image form so that it still appeals to your audience yet it is still informational enough for them to know how to access your magazine.

Institution

Born out of necessity, billboards were probably first used to convey a message to the majority of individuals who were illiterate. The oldest known billboard ad was posted in the Egyptian city of Thebes over 3,000 years ago and offered a reward for a runaway slave. However It wasn't until the invention of lithography in the late eighteenth century that billboards as a medium expanded into an art form. The first art poster was created in 1871 by Englishman Frederick Walker. The 

Analysing Existing Billboards.

Whilst conducting my research I found it difficult to find pre-existing regional magazine billboards. I think the best places to advertise them would be London because it is the capital of the country, therefore compared to Cornwall it would be easy for people to see my advert because they have business people coming from across the country everyday so it will be viewed more than somewhere rural like Cornwall which is the county my regional magazine will be about. It would also be better to advertise in a bigger city as you would get a wider audience that would view the advert.

This magazine billboard is the only one I could find that vaguely advertises a regional magazine. "The resident" is a Luxury lifestyle magazine in London therefore I will use this as reference to creating my own billboard and whilst advertising my magazine. They have gone for the colour palette of orange and cream which is an eye catching colour so that it attracts the attention of passing by people. I also think they chose this colour as the magazine will have a target audience of older people in the higher social class as it is a "Luxury" magazine. The colour orange also connotes passion, joy and happiness so it will encourage viewers to have these emotions.

They have also have images of the product they are advertising in the various different forms it is available, which include printed, via mobile, iPad and they also have their own app to view their previous magazine. A common convention for a billboard is a website ling that people could follow to get an online version of the magazine, they choose to include this because billboard are meant to only include essential information so if the customer wanted to read more they can also find out more information through the website.

The main part of the billboard is made up of the magazine title "The resident" therefore the only image is of the other media surfaces the issue is available on. This means that they didn't use any star vehicles, camera angles or shots, therefore this represents that there audience may be of and older age as they prefer more textual information in comparison to someone younger who may prefer more images.