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.