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

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In terms of my magazine layout, I did not plan to go against any layout convention. Since I am still an amateur in editing magazines, I believe using the layout convention as the guideline is the best first step to start my work in producing magazine. Many of the fonts that I use are also conventionally used by other fashion magazine like Fashion Didot, Heroine Pro and San Serif due to their versatility and modern style font. I also believe that it is easy for most people to read  using these fonts compare to using cursive fonts.

 

However, I manage to challenge some of the layout convention. Unlike most fashion magazine cover, they always use colorful puff word or many cover lines that fill the cover page in order to attract more buyers, I however, took a different approach in making my magazine more appealing, I reduce the amount of texts on my cover in order for the viewer to focus and take interest on the photography of the main image instead. I have also kept the masthead and other lines of the magazine simple in black & white to keep the almost monotonous feature of the magazine.

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In my first draft of my double spread page, I had attempted to use a pink colored background for my article, it came out inconsistent with the whole magazine, in the end I had to refer back to the layout convention and decided that I will use white background instead as it looks more neat and consistent with the whole magazine.  Another convention that I had tried to challenge was by designing my own article heading, although I like how it came out, I figured it was too distracting when put in double spread page so I had to replace it with a more simpler one.  This is why I believe that challenging the layout convention will not always result in the best outcome.   

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What makes my magazine brand different is that, It is made exclusively for bag products. I’ve realized that in most magazine, when they advertise bags, the products are always just put onto one section of the magazine and they only manage to cover certain types of bag, mainly handbags. Thus, there are always not enough bags in the collection to choose from. Because of this, readers struggle to look for the perfect bag that cater to their taste. This is why I dedicated a whole magazine brand specialized for bags, so that now there are more bag options to choose from and bag lovers out there can enjoy scanning through these pages. And not just that, my magazine brand also cover issues about bags, such the topic of  making new brand for bags, or giving tips on how to choose which bag to wear, so that people are more interested in the topic of bags.

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Another thing that I want to challenge is the lack of diversity and inclusion that most magazine is struggling with. Although my magazine does not directly relates to social issue, but I am aware that the way I will be selecting the models and the product they use will reflect on the society itself. Therefore, in my magazine brand, I want to represent as many people from different backgrounds and of wide ranges of body types so that every girls and women out there knows that they also belongs in fashion too. 

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Before answering the question as to how my magazine represent social groups or issue, I would first like to express the impact of representation on media, using one of Stuart Hall's quote in his talk titled Representation & the Media, "When these media representations - e.g. representations of race - are consistently repeated, or are presented in stereotypical ways, there is a strong tendency for them to become ’naturalized’, meaning that we take the representations for granted as ’truths’, while they become manifested in our common and individual consciousness"

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As I mentioned in my other documents, my target audience are mainly female audience, therefore it is expected of me to portray as many women as possible in my magazine. It is no secret that media plays a huge, if not a defining role, in the question of representation and perception of beauty. Because of this, I have to realize that the way I will be portraying different gender in my magazine is crucial in shaping the view of my female audience about themselves. However,  while reviewing other popular magazine,I realised that there are many problems with how current magazines still stereotypically portray female in their contents, I realized, women’s magazines objectify women just as much as men’s magazines do. You can see that there are not many differences between how they portray gender roles in both male and female magazines for example the way they based their contents around heavily sexualizing and objectifying women.  The results of these sexually objectified images of girls and young women in advertising, media and magazines is harmful to girl’s self- image and health development.Sexual objectification is defined as the act of viewing, using, or valuing a person as an object who’s worth is based primarily for his or her physical and sexual attractiveness. Sexually objectifying experiences are not exclusively sexual in nature but also include the societal pressure to create, present, and always improve an attractive appearance for example the thin-ideal for women and the muscular-ideal for men. In the same way that we inherently understand that the clothes in a fashion magazine are what is currently in fashion, we also approach models with a predetermined understanding that they are beautiful - a notion taught to us by our society; models are the ‘embodiment’ of beauty. And because of these girls are often fell victim into pressing themselves to fit the mold of what is considered as beautiful and sexy. Anorexia, malnutrition, depression is some of the health problems that may occur during the process of achieving this almost impossible bodily standard. So, this is a problem that I am trying to change using my magazine brand. 

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As I mention before, diversity and inclusion is something that most fashion magazine are still struggling to achieve until recently. This problem often leads to poor self image. In many cases readers who do not see themselves being represented in the fashion media will think that them and their people are not compatible or worth taking part in the fashion world. This can also further lead to problems such as racism and other discrimination once they are deemed as non conventional to be working in fashion industry. I, myself want to tackle this problem through my magazine though not directly.  I make sure to create a magazine brand where the models are from different religious or racial background and featuring models of different body types or size, without the unnecessary stereotype.  It is important for magazines to add diversity in order to be relatable and engageable to wider range of female audience around the world.I was inspired by Halima Aden who is is a Somali-American fashion model. She is noted for being the first woman to wear a hijab in the Miss Minnesota USA pageant. Following her participation in the pageant, Halima received national attention and was signed to IMG Models. she became the first ever woman to walk in a New York Fashion Week show wearing a hijab. The fashion industry still has a long way to go toward inclusivity, but it is no doubt that one of the people helping pave the way is Halima Aden.In my magazine, I had featured a model wearing a hijab to represent Muslim girls in my fashion magazine cover. I believe that this can help promote modesty and inclusivity to the readers. The reason I decided to portray a hijab wearing model is because I believe that the top brands in fashion industries are lacking in Muslim representations and I want to fight the stereotypes that hijab is a tool of oppression and seen incompatible for fashion when in fact it is due to the oppressions and discriminations of other that lead to hijab being excluded in most fashion events. This further proof my point that in 2020, there is still problem of hijab being banned at college institution in Belgium when it is mandatory for Muslim girls to wear. (https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/belgian-protest-for-headscarf-rights-at-university/1900618 ). I also believe this is a way to repulse against sexualizing female by also showing women in modest clothing. 

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

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From the start of my production, I had already set that my target audience to be female audiences who are generally interested in fashion or specifically interested in bags. However, since the age range of my target audience are from 15 to 50 years old, I had to create a  strategic plan that can help me market  my product as well as to engage to these wide range of age demographic. After further thought, I decided that after I had completed my first magazine, I will set up an official Instagram account to promote my magazine brand. There, I will be updating on the sneak peek or behind scene of my photoshoot production and also inform my followers of my  upcoming magazine issues, this will help grab people’s attention and build intrigue around my magazine brand. Aside from that, by using Instagram, I can also collect potential readers of my magazine and it will allow me to communicate with my customers as they can express their opinion using the direct message and comment section and I will be able to reply to them directly.  Personally what I think is a great quality that Instagram has is their translation button in the comment section as it can avoid language barrier between me and my customers, this can help me understand my readers that may come  from different countries or region and speak different languages. Omnicore website had also  provided me with a rather informative statistic that had made me decide to use Instagram in the first place. They have stated that, in terms of gender demographics, 68% of Instagrammers are female user. Overall, 38% of female internet users are on Instagram compared with 26% of male internet users. 59% of internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 use Instagram and 33% of internet users between the ages of 30 and 49 use Instagram. According to one study, 17% of teenagers say that Instagram is the most important social media platform to them and 90% of users are under 35 years old. Meaning that, most of my target audience are active users of Instagram. Another way for me to attract more readers is by featuring popular fashion influencer in my magazine both from local and foreigners, by doing this I can gain more engagements from public when these influencers with large number of followings will be able to promote my magazine brands to their followers. 

 

In terms of magazine distribution, I would want to cater to different customers or readers preferences, I had decided to use both digital and physical prints to distribute my products. I will create an official website and an application that can access to my magazine products so that readers from other far countries can have access to reading my magazines. There are plenty of advantages to using a digitally published magazine as it allow massive savings on printing costs and support eco-friendliness. Depending on the technology used, digital magazines can have aesthetic and functional benefits as well. For example, they may contain moving animations, video, and other dynamic content that a physically printed magazine are not able to offer. In order to create my own official magazine website, I will use the Flutter site to build my application and web. Flutter is Google’s UI toolkit for building compiled applications for mobile, web and desktop from a single codebase. By integrating In-App Purchase with Flutter, it allows me to set up payment for reader’s subscription, therefore I can also generate income from my digital magazine.  I had also planned to set up a one year subscription for my magazine in which I will have my magazine to be published every 3 months, one magazine edition for one season every year. In my magazine digital application, it will only contain my magazine brand info, magazine products, payment, help button, access to my other social media account as well as privatized comments section for users to give their feedback. The reason I had not allowed public comments to be seen is so that there is no inappropriate or offensive comment being left behinds for other users to see. I will promote my magazine application through media advertisement as well as through mentioning in my other social media platform.

 

Meanwhile, the physical prints for my magazine will only be distributed in my country, which is Brunei Darussalam and nearby region such as Miri and Kota Kinabalu Malaysia, mainly due to the fact that most locals go there at least once a year to do year end shopping. In order to get my magazine published, I will contact a local publishing company called the MMW agency to collaborate with them. MMW agency is a full-service creative agency based from Brunei Darussalam. The reason that I had chosen this magazine publishing company as the best option is because they not only help their clients with the printing and distributing of their magazine brands, but they also help magazine brand to create corporative identity, teaching clients to build social media marketing skills to teaching digital advertising skills as well as help the magazine  brand with their brand managements. Therefore it is like an all-in-one service that is being offered. MMW had first started working 11 years ago, in March 2009, as of 2021, they now has over 40 creative members collectively including the BHC magazine which is one of the most celebrate magazine on home living and lifestyle guide though they end their magazine edition in 2019. Once my magazine is printed and published, I will have my magazine to be distributed in local bookstore  including the local Best Eastern in bandar, the NollyBook branches in Brunei, meanwhile in Miri and Kota Kinabalu, I will be selling my magazine in Popular store and Times bookstore where there is usually more customers that can view my magazine products. 

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 How did your production skills developed throughout this project?

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Throughout this  project, I had developed a variety of different skills and in this presentation, I will give out the details of my progress. During my first magazine creation, I had learned the importance of planning and time management in creating a magazine as I had encounter a lot of problem without it, especially with the photoshoot, So I made sure that in this second magazine project, I am not repeating the same mistakes. every photoshoot that I had was planned earlier before executed. My first photoshoot for this magazine wasn't much of a success since I had to model by myself and the lighting of the room in which I had my photoshoot had limited lighting. Thus, I did not get to explore my photography skills in this photoshoot because I had to focused on two things at once, the shoot timer and getting my pose right. However what I had improved was my posing skills, I had tried a few different pose and decide which pose looks good and which doesn't. In the end I manage to find an image from this photoshoot that I later use in my contents pages, although this photoshoot was planned for my magazine cover. The second magazine cover photoshoot what a success as I had plenty of picture to choose from, this is because I had someone to model for me. I had planned out this photoshoot earlier with my friend, I had arranged everything including the outfits, the setting and the pose. What I am missing in this photoshoot though, is that I did not have any monopod or lighting set up  to properly take overhead pictures of my model without having trouble with the lightings. In this photoshoot I had learned a lot about the camera by trying out the manual focus and different settings to achieve the image that I want. In my last photoshoot, I had prepared all the set up and creating my own background using a white canvas. This time I had to also model myself as I don't have anyone to model for me. Setting up the ring light was not the problem but having no tripod was sort of challenging, I had to grab a stool and placed books on top of it in order to place my camera at the level I wanted it to be. Again the challenge was with rushing a pose to get in time  with the timer. Fortunately I had a few good photos that I can use for my double spread page. Here I learned how to work with what I have when I don't have anything to support my photoshoot. Although it was hard to do the photographing without all the necessary tools, it was still doable.

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Aside from the technical photography skills that I developed, I had also developed editing skills using the Adobe photoshop and InDesign.  In this second magazine project, I had experiment a lot more with photoshopping, Now I am able to retouch photos, change the photos lighting or colors or even change the background of the image. Meanwhile using InDesign, I had learned a lot about the magazine conventions specifically the text conventions, I had a lot of trial and error with my double spread page. I learned them mostly through watching YouTube videos. I now know more on how to use these two apps to my advanced.  After the production of my magazine, I had to do research on how to distribute my magazine and engage with my target audience, from that I had more knowledge on what to do when I actually want to publish my magazines. One of the mistakes that I had learned from doing this project is that I need to be more cautious and disciplined in taking notes of what I had done because I had problem with documenting my product development as I already forgot some of the things I had done in editing. I will make sure not to do this in my next magazine production.

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How did you intergrate technologies- software, hardware and online- in this project?

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https://prezi.com/view/0HfRKcImk6i4kciGjKiv/

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Throughout this coursework, I have integrated many technologies in my work as each technology perform different function that allows me to achieve my end products. The software technologies  that I had used for this coursework are mainly Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Indesign and Microsoft Word.

Using Adobe Photoshop I was able to retouch my scanned or digital images that I will use in my actual magazine cover, magazine contents page and magazine double spread page. In my magazine cover, I had used Photoshop to improve the color tone and brightness of the images into a fresh style, as well as using it to remove the unwanted object or dots on both the model and the background, using Patch Tool or Spot Healing Tool. For my contents page and double spread page, I had to individually edited each images that made up these pages, most of my edit involves removing the background of the images as I only needed pictures of the bag products and not their backgrounds. What I like about using Photoshop is that it allows almost any type of modification I wanted in an image and still maintain the high quality images even after the many editing. Meanwhile, I mainly used Adobe Indesign to edit and add texts in my magazine contents page and double spread page. At first I worked on my magazine cover texts in Photoshop Adobe, however, after my tutor had recommend me to use InDesign, I found out that it is way simpler to use InDesign as it provides guideline and margin that is useful for me to estimate and organize my texts to be neater. After I get used to using InDesign, I had been using this application to do my whole Double Spread Page layout as it is easier for me to move one thing without affecting the other elements on the page. Aside from using software for editing, I had also used Microsoft Words to save all my documentation including Research and Planing document, Coursework Development document and Creative Critical Reflection document in my laptop before uploading on my blogging site, this is so that if the current blogging site that I am using end up crashing, I will still have my work saved and not have to redo all the work that I had done. I had also chosen to use Microsoft Words because I am more familiar with the setting so it is easier for me to do my work. Moreover, I am able to envision and plan out the layout design for my blog using Microsoft Word before creating them on my blogging site.

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Hardware technologies that I had incorporated in producing my magazine includes a DSLR camera, my laptop, tripod, ring light, LED photo box and Wacom tablet. The camera that I use is a DSLR camera which stands for digital single-lens reflex, this means that the lens of the camera can be detach or replace with a different ones creating a new viewfinder. I mainly use the DSLR camera to take picture for my magazine because it works well under lowlight and it produces images with better resolution and sharpness compare to when using a normal-mirrorless-lens camera or phone camera. I personally like to use the  Sony A7 DSLR Camera because I am more familiar with the setting and it is by far the best professional camera that I have tried. Aside from that, the hardware that I had used the most throughout this coursework would be my MacBook Pro laptop because I did all my work including research, documenting, blogging and editing there. I prefer to use MacBook for editing on Photoshop compare to using desktop computer because MacBook has a higher resolution screen which makes it easier for me to zoom in the detail of the images. I also like to do my work using my own personal laptop because I am able to do my work anytime I want as I always carry my laptop around wherever I go. In order to make my Photoshop editing more efficient and less time consuming, I had used my Wacom tablet because it helps me polish the finest details in my image with precision because of the sharp tip of it's pen. It is also easier for me to navigate around my laptop when using the Wacom pen compare to using a computer mouse because it has thinner grip and wider area to work on.  I can also use the button on the Wacom as shortcut for undo. The equipments that I had used to make photography easier is the Gizomos tripod that I borrowed from school, I used this tripod to get my camera leveled and stationary as my hands are always unstable when holding the heavy DSLR camera. Aside from that, I also used to the tripod to hold my camera at the angle that I want whenever I have to photograph myself with timer shot, this result in a more sharper images as the camera is not shaking. I had borrowed ring light stand and LED photo box from school as lighting controllers. I used them to create a good lighting for my pictures as it evens out the light as well as reduces shadow on a subject or an object when taking photos. In the second contents page photoshoot, I had the chance to experiment with the school's LED photo box where I took picture of my bags. The LED photo box was very convenient as I manage to get a lot of detailed photos of my items, I compared it with the image of the bag that I took without the LED photo box and I realized it was not as great as the ones with it because there was excessive shadow around the items I took.

 

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In terms of online technology, I mainly use Wix, Youtube and Google search.Wix is a customizing website that is build for many purposes including  app market, online article as well as  blogging site, they provide at least 100 template readily available to be used. I used Wix entirely as a blogging site where I update on progress in Media studies and also upload my coursework. The great thing about using Wix is that it is very user-friendly and it allows the users to customize their own sites using their aesthetic decorative which I are lacking in most other blogging site. On the other hand, I also also used Google to do most  of  my research especially for my Research and Planning documents  because it can lead me to varieties of sources that I can refer to. Sometimes, I also used Google to access or open up the other website including both Wix and Youtube when I don't have it's individual application. Last but not least, using YouTube, I learn topics relating to my magazine products such as learning conventions or learning how to use Adobe Photoshop and InDesign. I prefer learning using YouTube because they provide many different types of video that usually better illustrate complex  concept and ideas into a simpler explanation which is easier to understand. When searching easy ways to use Adobe Photoshop I personally like to watch videos from a YouTube channel called PHLEARN, because not only he demonstrate the tutorial very simply but also because he used MacBook to do his Photoshop editing which makes it easier for me to refer to as I too use MacBook. Last but not least, I also also used Google to do my research especially for my Research and Planning documents  because it can lead me to varieties of sources that I can refer to. Sometimes, I also used Google to access or open up the other website including both Wix and Youtube when I don't have it's individual application.

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