Evaluation question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Looking back now I can see the tremendous amount of difference that has occurred when making my main task of a music magazine to when I did my preliminary task of my school magazine. Before when I made my school magazine I knew very little about the programmes I as using and didn't have a good idea about designing or laying out my work. Now, although my work is far from being perfect or to a professional level, I believe I have made a lot of progress and my work is now at a much higher standard than it was before.

Front page 

A you can see here my front page for my school magazine is very simple, plain and quite empty. There are no extra sections of text that tell you about the inside of the magazine, whereas my music magazine includes a lot of extra information to let the reader know what is inside this is how I attracted an audience to my music magazine.

Title

One of the main features that I think has made my preliminary task so different to my main task is the title.

My school magazine title is not very bold or eye catching and I wrongly put it on a dark coloured background and it fades in sections slightly and cannot be seen clearly. In my Music magazine I made sure that The title would be able to be seen clearly, being the priority of clear things on the page as the title is the first thing the reader is dawn to and can determine weather it is a success or not. I put it on a black box background so that the monochrome style made it easy for people to read it. Obviously when i was making my school magazine i was not aware of this. The 'Cherry tree lane' Part of the title in my school magazine is very Small in comparison to the page which is a result of bad layout and page planning. If I had made it bolder and bigger like the 'Weekly' part I would not have had this problem. This then shows how I have become more aware of bad design decisions and have used my knowledge to avoid this error occurring in my main task of my music magazine.

Image wise I think I was not that bad to begin with as my photos are clear. However i recall having difficulties with the lighting on the school magazine image as there was a harsh glare on their faces and one model looked considerably brighter in colour to the other. I avoided this in my Music magazine by taking my pictures in the correct environment so that I could be sure to not have this problem again, although I only did this in second photo-shoot for the front page. 

Contents page 

 For my contents page, in my school magazine there are very random and inconsistent choices of colour used and I didn't seem to be aware of anything that was going on in the page. In my music magazine I have chosen my colours, stuck to them and used them in the appropriate ares. As you can see in my school magazine there is a lot of white space and it looks a bit like a poster rather than a contents page. I have learnt from that mistake and in my music magazine I proved how I used up the space that I needed to and filled all of the empty spaces. The writing in my school magazine has no border or control and just looks like it is floating there and in my music magazine I made sure it had a border and looked separated to the images , making full use of my space.

As you can see here I have made huge progress in taking pictures for my contents page. There a really big problems with my school magazine image such as the lighting being way too harsh on the models faces. This happened because I was not in the right environment and had put the flash on my camera. I clearly avoided this problem with my music magazine as I chose to have proper lighting set up so  the model was lit well and there was no need for the flash of my camera. This made so much difference and you can see how different these pictures look in quality.

Planning

If there's one thing I have learnt from this experience it is that I must plan ahead more. In both tasks I found myself with limited l=time and deadlines got closer very quickly, even more so when I did my preliminary task. For my school magazine I was very late at taking my pictures therefore i had hardly any time to do the rest that needed to be done. For my music magazine I actually took all of my pictures very early on and that left me slightly more time to do other things.

Evaluation question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

There is so much that I have learnt from making my music magazine, that I was completely clueless about before-hand. Not only how to use programmes but the tools within it aswell and how to navigate my way around. When doing my evaluations I have learnt how to use a range of technologies and websites that I had never evn heard of before. I have made a powerpoint on side-share showing the different things I have learnt from constructing my media product.

What i have learnt about technologies from maisie1995

Evaluation question 4

Who Would Be The Audience of Your Media Product ?

As I have previously stated before, the audience of my music magazine varies in types of people and they do not necessarily come under one category of person or social groups. In evaluation question 2 I showed a video of how my magazine and the audience link together and how I have tried to attract them. It showed their hobbies and interests briefly which I will now elaborate one to show who my audience is. The audience as a whole is a female young adult which is from around about 16-24, however could be slightly younger or older. I believe that a good way to show the audience of my magazine would be to show this short clip of the life of a person who may read my magazine.

Evaluation question 2

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups ?

Evaluation question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Other institutions that may distribute my magazine could be fashion clothing stores like Topshop or Urban Outfitters, as my magazine features the styles found in their shop. They could do this my selling it at counters and tills or having an advertisement on their website which I could then use to get my branched out to as many people as possible.

Due to the ongoing and ever-growing development of technological convergence, Apple have something called 'Newstand" which I actually used for my research. It is basically a shelf in your mobile phone that allows you to download (some free, some cost) magazines and have them t read in the comfort of your mobile phone. This would be perfect for my magazine because I am aiming it at an age of the population who are increasingly dependant on the Internet and technology rather than going out and buying paper magazines. Therefore this would be a  great opportunity for my magazine.

Evaluation question 5

How Did It Attract / Address Your Audience ?

This video displays how my media product promotes and familiarises my target audience with hobbies, fashion, interests and more that they are interested in and are a part of.

This shows how different aspects that are shown on my music magazine will bring in my audience and attract them to read it.

My target audience's social groups are quite lose and do not narrow down to one specific type of person, otherwise that would not be a big enough audience to target. My target audience enjoy going to popular music festivals and dressing in the latest fashions from Topshop and Urban  Outfitters. They enjoy some music that is in the charts and other more alternative artists like Lana Del Rey and Paloma Faith. If I had to narrow it down to one name it would be 'indie pop'. By including a variety it means I am opening up my magazine to lots of people not just one specific type like Rock or Jazz does in that sense.

Evaluation question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Every aspect of my music magazine has stemmed from what I have found in my research. I used what I found as a foundation of making my own media product. In some ways I recreated many similar aspects of real media products, and at other times I challenged them and made something different. I used my research to help develop my own ideas, in order to successfully attract my target audience with my design, style, colours, celebrities and fonts.

Photo

 As you can see here my images for my media products have been inspired by my research. However they differ slightly as I have put in my own ideas and made them original. I have developed on what I have found and created something that will fit my particular target audience. I have based my images around style icons and celebrities that my target audience would enjoy and aspire to be like. I have chosen to have all female models as my target audience is girls aged around 14-25. In my contents page I used a female model, stemmed from an idea of a male model image, because I wanted all of my models to be girls. In order to put forward the edgy 'indie'/pop genre I had to make sure that the clothing used was to the style, having in mind what I found in my research but obviously slightly different.

Title

As shown in this diagram, you can see that my title is a product of all of my research combined together. I have taken parts of each of them and created my own title. Having a good title is very important as it's the first thing people will notice in my music magazine and can be the starting point for attracting a certain audience. I tried to make my title seem as professional as real media products which is why I specifically made it very similar, due to the fact these are successful magazines and are of a similar style, therefore by creating something very similar, mine should have the same effect and be popular to my target audience. At the same time I have challenged real media products and the original forms in which I discovered them as I have chosen to have a black box with my title inside which has not been found in any of my research. I decided to do this to give it extra volume and statement to the page instead of it looking randomly placed.

Contents page

My contents page is something that mostly challanges and develops real media products, as I created something very unique and different to seen before magazine contents pages.

 

I created this using a layout that I had found and liked in one of my reserach images.

There is a clear use of ideas from my research displayed in these images, however the images used snd the title challange what I found howver all of which has branched out from images I have looked at. As I presented previsously the corellation between my image that came from the blurred image I found in my research.

Front page
From all 3 of my media products this is most probably the one that is most similar to my reserach as most a lot of the ideas came from research, including the image, fonts and title.

As you can see from the above I have taken different parts from all of these magazines and made them into my own media product. I challanged things like the title, mentioned before, but with the text everything I made myself was designed based upon what I had seen and learnt in my research.

Final Double page spread

Final Contents page

Final Front page

Double page spread process and construction

The first thing I had to do to complete my double page spread was to edit my picture. I chose this image because it was the perfect look for the double page spread because she was facing outwards and towards the left side, which will be where the writing is. I edited this image using Pixlr, an on line photo editing website. First of all I used a tool called the 'spot heal tool' to get rid of skin marks and blemishes.

I then highlighted, with the 'lassoo tool', the leotard the model is wearing and put the brightness and contrast up just to make her clothing seem less dull and more magnified in the image.

 Then to make the whole background seem brighter I selected around the model and the shadow with the lasso tool and adjusted the brightness to '30' so that it became completely white in the background.

This was all of the editing that I did for my double page spread image so I then moved on to designing the actual pages.

I placed my image on the right side of the double page, making sure it covered the whole thing. I then moved onto my title/headline which was 'WYNTER WESTWOOD SOLO GIRL'. I drew up a text box and wrote this in 'arial narrow bold' as this font seemed pretty close to one of the ones I saw in my research. I placed it in the centre and at the top of the page and centred all of the words. I made it quite large because that was the look I was going for in my double page spread. I decided that this looked a bit plain and boring so I adjusted the measurements of the text to make it bolder and more interesting.

Once I had adjusted it, it then look like the above picture which was better because it suited the image more and just overall looked better than it id before.
I then moved onto the writing and that began with a subtext that was to be situated bellow the title/headline. In this I wrote 'AFTER SPLITTING WITH TRIANGLE IN 2011, WYNTER WESTWOOD HAS BEEN NON STOP STUDIO WORK EVER SINCE. RECENTLY SIGNED BY RED ONE, AS A SOLO ARTIST, SHES BRINGING TO THE TABLE SOMETHING NO ONE HAS EVER SEEN BEFORE.' I put this into the same font as the title but put a slight italics on it.
I decided to have my main article in the classic form of columns and since I was only using the one page for text I only fit in two columns. I had already decided to have big letters at the beginning of the paragraphs so I did this twice within the article. I wanted the letters to look embedded and part of the text so I made separate text boxes for them and the writing that was to be directly next to it.

Once this was done and I had finished writing in my article I  began to change my mind on the background of the large image and whether I wanted it to be completely white on the background. So I made a 2nd layer and changed this image to the one where the background had not been edited.

I looked at them both and decided to go with the grey background because it then looked like more of an image because the background of the writing is white.

When this was decided I began to make the finishing touches to my double page spread starting with a border and page numbers. To do this I put a thin line across the bottom and top of the page and at the top I put 'WYNTER GOES SOLO' above the border to show what the article is called and can be found in the contents page under the same name. According to my contents page the page number is 40 so I put it as 40-41. I also put the date at the bottom of both pages and put the title of the magazine 'HAZE' next to it in the corner.
When I had completed with I discovered I really disliked my headline so I randomly selected a font for 'wynter westwood' and a separate one for 'solo girl' which were 'brush script' and 'orator'

I spontaneously selected the orange colour and discovered that I actually quite liked it and the font added some more interest to the page. To make it more of a fuller, more united piece of work, I slanted the 'wynter westwood' text inwards but kept 'solo girl' straight. To do this I now had to separate the two into different text boxes.

Now that I had changed my title and was more pleased with it, I needed to add something else in the same orange colour so that it did not look random or out of place, as the only coloured thing on the page. To tie it all on I put a small amount of text on the right side that says 'FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW GO TO WWW.HAZEMAGAZINE.ORG'.

I again decided to change my title as I did not think that it justified well enough the edginess of the artist's picture. I reversed the colours and make the name (which is the 'punky' statement of the page) in black and the 'solo girl' in a softer orange because this text shows the sweet side. a sort of 'sweet and sour' kind of image.

I chose this font that is called 'lithos pro' as it is much sharper fatter and edgier that the previous calligraphic font. I believe this font supports the image more as a whole.

Double page spread photos

I took my pictures in colours but put all of them into a black and white effect because I know that I definitely want my picture to be black and white. I used the same model and outfit as my double page spread. I am going to show some of my preferred ones and come to a conclusion on which photo I am going to use.

 As you can see from these pictures I had 2 different outfits. I think overall I swayed more towards the ones with the leotard and hat as they represent a more 'indie' look as opposed to the more innocent look of the white top. With the poses I tried a few different things and my favourite ones are the one above and the very first one. Although the first one is slightly unfocused I still really like the pose but because of this I am going to use the one above.

Double page planning and drawings

For my photo planning I looked back at my mood board that I made for the whole of my magazine as I liked a lot of the pictures on there and the style that they were in.

I like these pictures and the model that I am using looks similar to this girl which is good. The make-up is quite dark and I like the overall darkness of the images. My favourite one is the one where she is wearing a hat at the top, of course I will only be shooting the top of the model, but the poses from this image will be kept in mind when I am shooting.

Although I already have a rough idea of how I am going to lay out my double page spread, I drew up 4 different, quite similar layouts that I like and I am going to choose my favourite one, but still keeping in mind what I found in my specific research.

The first one has the text on the left and image on the right. The title is slightly to the right with the text in one block below, I am not too sure on this one because I don't think it looks evenly spread. The second one has a very large title that goes across two lines, again with the image on the right. I do like this one a lot but am not sure whether there is enough text. The third has the title directly centred but not covering all of the left hand page as does the subheadings, but with the text all the way across. Again like number 1 it may look too spacious. Number 4 is pretty similar to number 2 except mirrored with a smaller title, I do not like this as much and prefer it with the text on the right and image on the left.
I am going to go with number 2 because I like the idea of having a really big title and in my research there is one with very little text like this.

Double page spread specific research

From my previous research I discovered that I like simple and plainer double page spreads with an image one side and writing on the other, more than the more detailed ones. I also like the theme of black and white as I think it looks quite effective if the whole page is in black and white with one thing in  a bright colour perhaps red or blue.

Even though this one had blue and orange I still think it follows the black and white rule quite nicely, and definitely is something that I would consider making mine similar to. One thing that I dislike about this is the blue box in the text, I think it looks a bit messy. Another thing that makes this look good is the enlarged letter at the beginnings of the paragraphs. I am going to do this in mine.


Unlike the one above this one follows the simple black and white theme with no added colour at all. The image on this one goes over more than half of the page and there is a very small space for the text. I will not be doing this as i prefer the half and half rule, however I do like the way this one is with the picture on the left and I think I am going to lay out mine this way. In terms of the image it  is the same as the above one in the way that only the shoulders are shown in the
image and is more of a head-shot.
This one if another double page spread that I liked and may consider for the design of my own one. I like the big letter in the middle and how it marks the artist in a forceful way. Again there is only one image and the interest is completely shared across the two pages. I will probably not have a very large letter in the page but I do like the bigger letters that start the beginning of the paragraphs.

Double page spread general research

When looking for double page spread ideas, I cam across many different styles and layouts, some that I thought were good and others that I did not personally like.

This one is probably the most detailed and 'busy' double page spread that I found. In some ways I do like this one because the pictures are very fin and interesting and its a very original layout with the small pictures going across at the top. I will not be using something this image heavy as I prefer a one image double page spread. However the headings are very bold and have a clear colour scheme that appears to work within the style of the page. I like the splash of colour that the bright red dress brings to the page and I think it adds interest to the rest of the black and white theme.

This is another layout that I found, this time using a slightly more uniform layout of having two separate pages. Again there are more than just one image used and I actually prefer this as there are only three and are smaller than the ones in the previous one. There is a definite colour theme here, with blue used for most of the headings and borders on the page. I like the way that this one has a main large image on one side that takes up most of the page.

I much prefer this one from all the ones I have looked at so far. I like the idea of having text on one side and a picture covering the whole other side. On the right side the text is in one block with the title above in very large bold letters. I think that this makes a really good statement even though it is very simple there is a clear contrast between the size of  'MADONNA' and the rest of the text.

Contents page process and construction

This is the process that I went through in order to create my finished product of my music magazine contents page. After deciding on my final images and the structure I began to edit my main picture.

On the left is the picture that I found in my research and decided to base my own on and on the right is the picture that I chose to use. To try and create this I first began by playing around with some of the tools in photo shop to see what I could do to try and achieve something similar. As you can see around the edges of the image on the left it is blurred, especially around the face, therefore I will do something similar to my own picture.

 

I first cropped the picture so that it would be the right shape for my magazine which is a long rectangle. I did this using the 'cropping tool'.

I then selected parts of the model eg. her leg and putting a coloured highlighter on it. I did this in various places until it looked multi coloured. The highlighter was one of the effects on photo shop that I found and had 3 bars of colour that you can adjust to make them brighter and different coloured. I chose to keep the colours very bright with mainly blue a the top, keeping the colours cooler around the models face so it did not look too red around her hair.

I managed to get the blurred effect on her face and arm by using the blur tool in photo shop.

After this I selected the whole of the outside using the 'lasoo tool' as seen in the picture above. I did this to make the background completely white and I did this by brightening it until it looked white in colour, shown in the picture to the left. I then selected the image as a whole and added a cooling effect to the picture to take out some of the Orange colours.







I then began on the rest of the aspects of the contents page, starting with the title. I drew up a text box and wrote 'contents' in the font of 'verdana' which is quite simple. I placed it in the top left corner which is where I planned to put it in my drawings.
 

This looked quite boring and plain so I made the 'C' of the word contents bigger than the rest of the word to add some effect and make it look more eye catching. I think this looked much better and made it look like more of a title rather than a subheading on the page.




The next stage that I focused on the was the main text. I began doing this by listing some numbers from 1-74, and put a pale pink highlighter around them to match the colours in the main picture. For the headings of the contents page I drew small boxes for each of them and filled them black with white writing inside.


Once I had put the text in that I
wanted, instead of putting a whole border around the section, I put two lines either side of the writing so it did not look randomly placed there.






I then placed the main image in the space that I planned to put it in which is the right top corner, I did this and made sure it was large enough to fill a large space on the page. After that was placed I placed the two smaller square pictures of concerts underneath, making sure they covered the bottom ending of the big picture.







Lastly I put a small version of the front cover below the title with the issue number next to it. In the same style I made small orange boxes with number of pages in to put in the corners of the images.









After completing what was essentially my finished product I began to pick out things that I did not like and things that looked quite messy. I also noticed that there was quite a large space in the middle of the picture and the text. However I did not want to do anything that was going to go completely away from my research, so I went back and looked again at one of the contents pages I featured in my specific research.

This is the one that I chose to look at again (above) for more ideas. The first thing I noticed is that there is not gap between thier image and text, however my image has a white background and just makes it look empty. One thing I noticed is the black line above the image and text box, and the black line inbetween the image and text box. This gave me the idea to create something like this. (right)

To do this I had to make my title slightly smaller so that it would fit and moved the body of text down slightly. Then I simply drew up 2 lines and gave them a weight of '4pt' and put them down the side of the text and image and underneath the title.

The next problem that I had was the squares that have 'issue no 22', '31,16 and 53' in them. I think these looked quite flat and boring so I looked again at my research and found that this one had not boxes around them. So I though of created just the numbers and words alone but thought they may still look flat and boring so I had the idea of making them 'jump out thepage' a bit more. To do this I discovered the 'drop shadow' tool in effects. I decided to stay with the colour orange just to keep it vibrant.

This image on the left shows the drop shadow I gave the number 31 and 'issue', with an opacity of 100%, distance of 3mm and size of 2mm. I then continued on to the smaller images and did the same but on the left small image you could not see the number very well so I moved it to the corner directly above.

I then felt that the 'issue no 22' could not be seen as well as the numbers with the drop shadow in orange so I decided to put it into black instead which looked much clearer and precise.