Double Page Spread for Music Magazine

Contents page for Music Magazine

Front Page of Music MAGAZINE

Contents page development

This is the final product I have chosen to use.

Evaluation - Question 7

Question 7 Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from making it to the full product?

With being this my last and final year I feel that I have continued to learn new things and by re-sitting my coursework it has allowed to re-evaluate not only my preliminary task but the AS finals from last year and looking back to the work then to now I feel I have developed my tools in Photoshop and understanding what my audience want and that in my opinion is the most important lesson I have learnt understanding what the audience want as by understanding that goal there are several factors you have to learn before you are able to reach it for example learning new skills both practically and theory based.

 Preliminary Task

Looking back at the first ever preliminary task I ever completed I can see how much my skills have developed as I can see now that although the elements needed to create a magazine are all there I have not thought a lot about the visual impact of the product and if I had to choose I would have to say that the contents page is a lot stronger than the front cover. For the front cover I can see that I have used a professional image for the front cover, however when creating a magazine you need it to look like a magazine whereas the front of this looks more like a newspaper. As a newspaper would be more likely to have an establishing shot rather than magazine would be as a magazine would normally have a model the full size of the page and it would have sell-lines rather than short paragraphs of the articles that are inside of the magazine.

The colours used for the preliminary task were not very good as the pink used looks a little childish, also the fact that I have used bubbled writing for the numbers also makes it look less professional. Although I understand the reason for using the pink colour, for the magazine, because the logo for Usworth College has a pink border around it however I feel that now if I were to use that colour I would use the colours more professionally and more liberally rather than using the colour for all the Contents page title 'Contents', 'This Week' and for the page numbers I think I would use them just for the numbers.

Last Years Product

Looking at the preliminary task and the final product from last year I can see a dramatic difference between the two, for starters it is starting to look like a professional magazine, rather than something that has just been put together in a matter of two minutes and possibly even made by a child.

In this product I have used the correct imagery for the front cover of the magazine as I have used an image of a model, which cover the full scale of the page, I have short sell-lines on the front cover, I have used a bar code, the proportions of the images look correct as before the images looked to be squashed, which is not something that is acceptable to be used in a 'professional' magazine.

The numbers for the preliminary task have been placed on the bottom right of the line of the text whereas this time I have thought about how the image is going to be viewed and it is going to be more helpful to the customer if they can quickly locate and establish which number is associated with what article and so decided to place the numbers at the front of the text.

I have the main colour of red more to my advantage and the reason I say this is because I have underlined celebrities names which is something I want my audience to noticed as soon as they look at this page. Unfortunately I think I have overused the red on this page and you can't clearly see the different elements of the magazine and because of the overuse of the colour I think that the contents page looks too flat and main reason for this that there is nothing stand out on the page to make it look that enticing. 

The double page spread I feel is maybe the strongest out of the three product as I have used a good collection of fonts and feel that I have used the red to my advantage more as I have added three red lines, all the same length and size and the reason for this is to mimic the exclamation mark on the masthead. Unfortunately I feel that the double page spread layout doesn't work effectively enough for me to say it looks professional as I feel there is maybe to much stuff on the double page spread and the only bit of space is the space around the model and although this makes the image more interesting to look at, as it doesn't hurt your eyes as it doesn't have a lot of stuff around it, it would be more beneficial if I had of reduced the size of the text beside the masthead as this would have given more space for the rest of the page below this. Another element which I feel could have made the difference on the double page spread would be the article, as the layout of the article would have been better if the article came further over to the right. I understand at the time I wanted it/needed it like that otherwise it would have meant the text being read in the crease of the magazine however the space needs to be created somewhere and looking back I have learnt that I should have either moved the article so that the article is not the full length of the page as by making it the full length it makes it look long and unappealing to read. This could make it look better however this would have meant less of the article on the page and if I really wanted to have the article on the double page I could have then moved the image and placed the text into the gap provided by moving the image.

One major thing I have notices when reading the article is that the style of interview, isn't very professional as it is questions and answers and now-a-days people want it to be like they are in the room and so start off by telling you where the artist has just came from, what the artist is wearing and then go onto the interview and instead of q+a, give it in paragraph form and this is the style I am using in my new product (as seen below).

Re-take - Final Product

After creating 2 magazines, both having their own faults I can definitely say what not to do and comparing all three of the magazine together I feel that this magazine product is definitely the strongest.

The front cover flows a lot better as the first front cover for my music magazine, looked flat and cluttered whereas now I feel that the different elements on all my product, front cover, contents page and double page spread, stand out a lot more and they don't look flat.

As you can see in comparison to last years front cover I have used a full image, the size of the page and in comparison to the preliminary task you can see that I am using medium close up rather than an establishing shot. With all my products I feel that I am using the correct style of image as I continue to use different medium shots throughout my product which is conventional for the magazine product. As well as medium shots for the images I have also created my own CD covers as I felt that having a feature of new album releases this could be another enticing element that my audience would benefit from as I know from my own experience that I like to see new releases and I like to know what other people think of the album before I go out and buy it. An example of where this is used in the media is the album chart on TV and sometimes on radio.

Evaluation - Question 6

Question 6 What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

From the process of constructing my product I have been able to continue my knowledge of skills that I have learnt previously last year and have also been able to use them skills to better my product and so the process has been even more valuable as I have seen my work transform from a grade C and hopefully to something better and in the process, I have been able to self access my work so that I can better the product.

Last year I mentioned several technologies that I had used through the process of constructing my product, the first being Photoshop; this is a useful software as this allows you to create a wide range of different products depending on what you need, as I mentioned I have continued to develop my skill and this I have learnt the ruler tool to a valuable tool when needing accurate readings as previously I have either used my own judgement, held a ruler up against the machine or have printed it off and then guessed as to how much it needed moving. By learning about this new tool I was able to have clean lines on my work and the impact of this is that the images looked more professional rather than images on one point and then text alongside the image would be half a point above or below or even if the article on the double page spread, if they didn't line up right or the edges of each column were not precise and because of this new tool I am now able to say that everything on my product has been checked with a ruler.

Again I have used the Move tool to arrange different things like the text and the images around so that I could have the different parts of the magazine in the place I wanted them not the place I have just dragged them into. Also with this tool you can then select the item you want and then use another tool, Transform tool (CMD+T) to make the item bigger or smaller and the impact of this tool is high also as the difference between a good looking magazine and a amazing looking magazine is the difference and the reason for this is because if something is too big the layout will look cluttered and thought through and on the other side of the spectrum if something is too small there would be too much blank space again making the layout of the magazine unsuccessful.

Whilst making the product I have changed the colouring of my magazine and so have needed to use the colour well to change the colours and the advantage to this colour well is that you can keep 2 colours locked, black and white and then you are free to choose 2 more colours. By having these two colours available, I was then able to move from product to product changing the colours of product for example the double page spread last year was mainly red and this year I started of white a gradient of black and white, unfortunately the image didn't match effectively enough for it to work successfully and so decided to use the background of the image for the use within the double page spread, I used the colour well to lighten it slightly as when put onto a big surface area it looked too dark and so needed lightened. As I had used this colour for the double page spread, different from any other page on my product as this was the special article and it is conventional on magazine to use different colours on the double page spread to the rest of the magazine for this page, however I didn't want to just have this colour used on my double page spread as I wanted there to be some consistency  throughout and so decided to use the colour used in the double page spread and put it onto my front cover, unfortunately the colour was again too dark and so had to lighten the colour. I used the colour for the extra information that came with the sell-lines on the front page. Looking back I can see that this tool allowed me to have freedom of choice when it came to choosing the correct colour.

I have also grown to use the zoom tool, as I have found when trying to get something precise for example lining up articles and images it can be hard to see if they fit perfectly and so used the zoom tool to get in close to the items on screen and once finished that certain part I would then use the tool to scroll out to see what this effect had on the rest of the product.

The second technology I used is Blogger, this is an invaluable tool as this allows you to post several things not only words, but also images, videos and links and this helps you to clarify your words and also as well as this by posting your work publicly it allows you to receive advice from strangers as well as peers for advice and guidance.

One part of using Blogger that I have used this year, which I never used last year was the Upload from Blogger as this allowed me to quickly find images  I have previously uploaded onto my Blog this then allow me to re-use them in another Blog post and an example of where this came in really handy was when I needed to reflect on my work from last year as I could place this years work along side last years and I could then make a judgement of what needed changing.

I have continued to use the text tools that are available to Blogger because when writing a blog post it can be really easy fr the words just to fall together whereas if you use headings in the middle of the blog you can then section parts of the blog up, making the impact of the blog easier to read.

Evaluation - Question 5

Question 5 How did you attract/address your audience?

When creating my survey I needed to know the age range interested in a new music magazine and so started off the questioning by asking them how old they are and from these results you can see that the there is definitely a market for people who are interested in magazines which is a relief for me as that is what my product is.

 The type of audience I am trying to attract would be young 17-30 year old who are interested in a variety of music in particular pop and r&b, who also enjoy reading magazine and who are willing to pay a small amount to actually but the product as there is no use creating a product asking people to pay 'x' money for it and they want it for free and that is why I have made a survey asking people how much they would be willing to pay for a music magazine.

This is where it gets interesting as I have created a magazine and in my opinion I felt that it would appeal to more females than males however there is an equal 50/50 split as to the people filling in my survey and with this information I will be able to have a look to see what both genders want and by putting in information that both genders like I will be giving myself a better chance of success as there will be a bigger audience for my product.

This part of the survey is worrying for me as most of the people who filled out this form are more attracted to listening to rock and roll than R&B however from this information I can see that there is still an audience out there for me who would like to listen to my music and another thing is that people who might like to listen to other genres doesn't necessarily mean they like to read about the same genre and this is what I asked next.

Again this is worrying as the higher percentage of people in the other question would want to read the same genre as they listened to however this question also applies to the people who enjoy listening to R&B which is my target audience.

Another question I asked in my survey was what would you like to see in a music magazine and one of the responses was 'information on artist and history of artist' this is something I have tried to include in my product as well as all the other information I have gathered from the survey feedback as this is the most important element of a magazine and with anything you read if the audience is telling you what they want to read about and you don't include them things in, 1 the survey would be a pointless exercise and 2 they probably won't be interested in the product which means I would have no audience.

To attract my audience I used a variety of different technologies to see what my audience wanted as there is no point in creating a product when there may not even be a market for the product and so last year I used a combination of Survey Monkey and since getting my work back this year I have been able to access the work again myself a year later and I have had lecturer and peer feedback on how they feel my product should or could look like with improvements and I then finally came up with what I have today. As I am part of the age group I feel that both me and my class mates are able to understand the advantages and disadvantages of certain aspects of the product as well as being able to give a knowledgeable reason for putting or not putting something in the magazine for example, should or shouldn't I put information of the magazine's social networking site? Yes, as this is how most young people use and so by giving them a link to something they see everyday it will be an advantage for the company.

From the survey I created online for people to fill in, I can see what my potential audience would rate my product as being depending on whether I have used the elements they have asked for in the survey.

In conclusion I have attracted my audience by making sure that there is an audience already out there who would enjoy reading my product and I then established what my audience would like to read in that product and by having these 2 factors I was able to have a knowledgeable understanding that my product would be able to attract my target audience of 17-30 years olds.