Evaluation: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The image to the left is my preliminary task school magazine front cover and on the right is my final product of my music magazine front cover.

Looking at this task I am finding it quite hard to compare the 2 covers because they are for 2 completely different genres so they are aimed at different audiences therefore designed in different ways but overall I am a lot happier with the look of my main task than my preliminary task and it also demonstrates what an improvement I've made through learning new techniques and 'playing around' with Pixlr.

Looking back at my preliminary task I didn't use any sell lines or any picture effects as such because I had not learnt my print media definitions yet in order to put them into practice and this was before we started our research part of the course so I had very little knowledge of magazines. I also find that I didn't use the space on my preliminary front cover very effectively because the picture I used was so large I only had space to put the name and some 'advertising' facts to promote the school so on my front cover for my main task I made sure that I used the space more wisely buy making sure I was able to add things like sell lines, a bar-code and other information such as the issue number and website which proves that I used the space more effectively.

I don't think I took anywhere as much care and dedication on my preliminary task as I did in my main task which is reflected in the quality of products which proves the more time you spend on a product, the better the quality is.

On my preliminary task I used my friend John as my model because I know that it was guaranteed that he would be free to do that however for my main task I used another friend, Aaron because I realised that these are 2 very reliable people that I could count on I did not realise this at first which is why on the day where I was going to take my photos I let 4 potential models know about this so I would have a bigger chance of at least one of them showing up. Luckily they all came so I got to choose which one I wanted which was fortunate for me. In terms of wearing crazy outfits or make-up I decided not to use that because I wanted quite a naturalistic front cover. The only extra that I used was a bow tie!

In my preliminary task, we were told to create a front cover and a contents page, however, in the main task we had to create a double page spread as well. So whereas, I'd had experience in creating a front cover and contents page before, it was a completely new experience creating a double page spread. I found creating the double page spread the most difficult thing because I had never done that before and I also found it difficult trying to find a topic for my DPS so after discussing this with my teacher I decided to do an article which would also include the audience by using words such as 'we' and 'our'.

The programme I used for my preliminary task was Adobe Photoshop CS3 extended edition however I found that I could not get used to it and found that I was not enjoying using this program which is why my first task isn't as high quality because I just found this software very difficult to use probably because I had no previous experience of using it and had no time to thoroughly get used to it. However I was so relieved to have found pixlr to to create my main task on and over time of using it I have fallen in love with it because it is so accessible to use and therefore I feel that my main task looks a lot better than my preliminary! At first I had some problems with saving because I lost quite a bit of work at first because it saved in  weird places or just didn't save for some reason but once I got to grips with saving my work in a certain place then backing it up on my memory stick I found the programme a lot more convenient. Also through watching tutorial videos on youtube I became so used to the programme that I learned some keyboard shortcuts which made my work a lot easier saved my time not having to go through all the drop down menus.

I found that doing the preliminary task very useful for a variety of reasons the main reason being that I discovered how I would not want my music magazine to look therefore causing myself to find a style that I liked and would therefore use. Another thing that I learnt is that even though I gave myself plenty of time to finish my magazine and all my research, I need to learn not to leave things to the last minute (e.g. parts of the evaluation) because that cause you to make mistakes therefore losing marks.

Evalutaion of the technologies I have used

I decided to create a Prezi presentation to portray this part of my evalutaion

Evaluation: Does your media product represent social groups

Evaluation: What kind of media institution might distribute my media product and why?

I decided to make a Windows Movie Maker presentation to portray this part of my evaluation.

Evaluation: How did I attract my target audience

Evaluation: Who would be the audience for your media product?

My audience would have an age range of 18-35 Males (around the university age- social group) and would need to have a significant interest in pop music because I would be interviewing various pop artists and asking in depth questions about their music/ careers and if you weren't a dedicated listener to pop music then you would not neccessarily know what I would be talking about. I think that my target gender would be Males because even though more women read magazines than men (48.8% of men as opposed to 51.2% of women- figuers from the NRS website) this proves that there would be more of a niche in the market for a male music magazine therefore more men would be open to buying my magazine and I would also be writing my article from quite a less mature/ sophisticated perspectiveive so it would be more enjoyable to read/ flick through and appeal to them more as well encouraging them to take part in active reading and talking about my magazine with other people therefore promoting sales.

I will be including information about upcoming concerts and festival that certain bands might be headlining them which means that my reader would have to have a distinct interest in going to concerts and festivals because I can imagine that there would be reviews in the next of issue of my magazine. I would also have opportunities to win tickets or even VIP tickets to go to these events which would be shown as part of the sell lines on my front page.

I would like to have an equal ratio of ethnicities reading my magazine but I have found out that people from an afro-Caribbean background are more into pop/ R&B music so I think they would have the bigger readership.

Like many other magazines I will be aiming my sales at the 'C2' sector of society and higher because these are the people who would be more likely to afford my magazine and take part in the active readership of telling other people about my magazine, commonly know as 'spreading the word', therefore again hopefully boosting the sales of my magazine.

Penumbra Effect- Undoubtedly there would be people outside my target audience age who would read my magazine because my magazine could be on a table where the initial reader left and maybe their sibling/ friend or parent might pick it up and start reading it and maybe be interested in what it says. These would be the people outside my target audience that would like 'Reverb'.

Evaluation: how my magazine challenges conventions

http://prezi.com/dhvl6ng70p3m/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

I decided to portray this part of my evaluation through a Prezi presentation. However for some reason it is refusing to embed itself on my post so I have pasted a link to the presentation so it is still accessible. 

My Pictures and how I edited them

Final draft of contents page

My contents page is also a sepia theme in conjunction with my front cover. I realise that my contents page might be quite spare but again I didn't want the back ground of the 'R' to go amiss however I have slightly based my contents page of that of 'NME' because I have put a preview picture down the right hand side with the number of the page in the corner of the picture. It is also a requirement that we also use an editors photo so I took an old photo from my laptop and inserted that. I put the main article in a different colour and larger font than the rest of the contents as well to make it stand out on the page more. I again used 'Pixlr' for the effects on this page.

My finished double page spread

I used one of my initial photos for my DPS background because I wanted a 'black and white' theme for this in contrast with the Sepia theme on the front cover. I used a wide shot because I could then use half of the photo to write my article on because the colours are relatively the same so I can use the save colour font. I wanted to follow the same colour scheme as the album (black, white and gold) 

My Final Front Cover

Here is my finished Front cover and I used the website 'Pixlr' which has allowed me to make a magazine cover that I like. I used a 'revel' effect to create a ripple look on the cover with a border like a camera film because I wanted the cover to have an 'old time' feel in correlation with Justin Timberlake's album because this is a magazine 'special' about him and his album is very much in that style. I only put a few sell lines because I didn't want the page to be too cluttered as well as still letting the audience still be aware of what is coming up in the magazine without losing the initial focus of the background picture because I want the background focus to be the main feature. I also inserted a barcode to make it look authentic.

Moodboard