Friday 8 February 2013

Heat magazine - Selection of content, construction of content, codes and conventions and modes of address.

Selection of content, construction of content, codes and conventions and modes of address
In this blog post I will be talking about the magazine Heat. I will be explaining the content they use and the construction of it, the codes and conventions and modes of address.

Heat magazine
The name of this media product is Heat magazine. Heat magazine is a celebrity gossip magazine and it is ran by the company Bauer Media, in England. All the content in Heat magazine is about celebrities, fashion, beauty and advice. Addressing the audience with Heat Magazine is about the selection of content. 

This could be something like the logo. The logo is the title on the magazine and every single magazine of Heat has the same title which shows it is the logo as it is instantly recognisable from this. The logo is 'heat' written in red with a white background or outline and they use this logo so that they are easily identified to the public. The logo stands out instantly as it's a bright colour on a plain background and this then creates it to stand out and red is also a colour that you'd find womanly, which is their target audience, so women would be attracted towards it. 


The content of the magazine is mostly to do with celebrities. It's got the latest relationships, celebrities becoming mothers and gossip that's going on in the celebrity world. The fashion content tends to be the latest red carpet dresses or celebrities that have been caught going out in a really fashionable outfit that has gained a lot of popular attention. All though in the fashion pages there is always a "high street" style next to the celebrity style, which may show that the target audience aren't higher working class, as they can only afford  the high street style. Unlike in a magazine like Vogue, there's only the the highest end style for the highest working class women.

The captions throughout Heat magazine are humorous, they tend to be in small print on the images. The images in Heat magazine are images of celebrities to go with the story that was written about them and obviously there images of the celebrities in the fashion pages. 

The modes of address means the way something is presented. The way Heat is presented is very basically laid out. First thing you see with the selection of content is the front page which has all the latest stories on. The front page tends to always have pinks, reds, bright blues and yellows on to catch the attention of people when they're looking over the magazines in the shop, this is a code and convention of most magazines, the front cover needs to catch the eye of people in the super market. When you look into the magazine the content you see is some adverts for products, the adverts throughout the magazine tend to be women advertisements things women would want because the target audience is women so it wouldn't make sense for them to advertise something for men or children. Then we have the contents page, then usually a page that has many different short pieces of information on that isn't important enough to make the main stories. After this there's stories that were on the front cover then usually fashion/health, movies that are coming into the cinema, advertisements or beauty in between the main stories and towards the back of the magazine we see the horoscopes, letters and emails, vouchers and fitness advice. The layout of Heat magazine is what I would call informal as there's images put under writing, text around images, captions over image. Also they tend to have one large image in the center of the story, the the text around. The titles are always in the top left hand corner and the sub titles are always underneath in smaller print and their stories are always in columns.

Recourses:
http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/about
Image 1



4 comments:

  1. This is a good start Cara but you need to include more terminology, for example when you are talking about selection of content mention this, at the moment you are only really mentioning codes and conventions but not highlighting why. For example you mention the logo but don't mention why it looks the way it does, you briefly mention why it is on the front of the magazine but you could relate this discussion to selection of content and progress it further. You also need to include images as well to highlight some of the points you are making. This is a really good start but I feel you could discuss a lot more.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You have taken on board the above comment and improved this post so well done. However I do feel the discussions can be progressed even further, at the moment you are describing aspects of the magazine which has put you at a pass level but to move into the merit level you need to start discussing why certain aspects have been included in the magazine in a lot more detail.
    To hit the merit level the unit outlines merit qualities as the 'learner will show with reference to detailed examples how products are constructed to appeal to the audiences they are intended for, and will give detailed descriptions of the audiences at which products are aimed. They might note, for example, ‘The more formal type of language used in The Guardian is illustrated in this article on the budget; this appeals to people who tend to be well educated and well-off, and who are usually in the type of job which puts them in social groups A and B. They probably work in areas like law, the media and education, so they are comfortable with formal written English.’ You need to give more detail within your examples to hit this level. You have however shown some merit qualities so you show the potential to hit this level.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You have now hit the merit level for for GC2 so well done Cara.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Excellent work! Thanks for sharing. Worth to be consider the information which helps business to take to an higher level. It was really excellent information. Keep up sharing great work.
    web development company in Bangalore | Website Design Company in Bangalore | cms company in Bangalore| hire CMS developers in bangalore

    ReplyDelete