CLOSED BLOG

~*Final Front Cover*~

~*Final Contents Page*~

~*Final DPS*~

~*Evaluation Question 7*~

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

Looking back on my preliminary task, I have learnt various new technical skills as well as how to create a successful product. My preliminary task was very bland and included no sense of creativity and the contents did not match with the cover. However, in my full product I have ensured a consistent colour scheme in order for all my pages to look as though they’re from the same magazine. My school magazine looked empty whereas my full product has a small amount of writing to match my style model VIBE. However, still looked like a legitimate magazine. I feel that since my preliminary task I have progressed as beforehand I did not really understand how to attract an audience successfully. I used extremely bright colours, however I used too many different ones meaning my task had no organisation. My contents page looked dull, including no exciting colours which contrasted to the front cover making them look like two separate magazines. However in the full task I ensured that my contents page fit in with my cover using eccentric colours effectively. I believe that my final product looks a lot more professional, I think this is because I had a style model to follow as well as research I had done on various other magazines. My preliminary task helped me to reflect on what I was doing wrong so that I could improve this within my final magazine. I realised that image quality and model choice was important, in my school magazine I used blurred images where my models did not represent anything however my final product images were better quality and represented the genre of my magazine well. The layout of my magazine was also important. My preliminary task did not have a specific layout causing it to look disorganised and unprofessional, to ensure my final product could be sold next to huge magazines such as VIBE, NME, XXL and Q, I followed the layout of my style model in order to create a genuine feel to my product. My Photoshop skills lacked at the beginning of the course however after the preliminary task I was able to learn how to use various tools such as blur and brush tool, this helped as I used these on my final product. The use of fonts in my preliminary task did not look effective, or ‘stand out’ to attract an audience. However I was inspired by VIBE to use simplistic fonts using the drop shadow tool to make the text more prominent. My school magazine was targeted at a niche audience however my final task was aimed at a much wider audience, having audience feedback to create the product, I was able to create a successful product. I did not have any audience feedback for my preliminary task so I did not really know what the audience wanted. I also made a double page which was a challenge but I feel as though I've over come it.

Preliminary Task

~*Evaluation Question 6*~

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of  

                       constructing this product?

Photoshop was the programme that I used to create all of my magazine pages. There is obviously a lot of things that I don't know about it, but I knew that I could create a half-decent quality magazine using it, so that's why I decided to use this programme. I learnt how to use the programme a little better in my main task by looking through tutorials on Google and YouTube etc. and asking my Media teacher. I learnt how to a lot of new things such as text effects, and how to hide skin blemishes, scars and spots using the healing tool and the patch tool. I learnt new keyboard shortcuts as too, which saved me from constantly going through the drop down menus. This included things such as taking a step backwards and taking a step forwards. I knew how to do this on a Windows computer, but I'd never really needed to do it on a Mac before, so this is something that I learnt throughout this process.

Dafont.com is the website that I used to download the majority of the fonts on my computer. I find that the programmed fonts on an iMac to be very basic, so I went on Dafont and downloaded a load of fonts that I could possibly use for my magazine pages. However, when it actually came down to it, I actually used Arial Black for the majority of my fonts, so the website didn't come in that handy for me. However, I do think that it's a really great website and I will definitely use it again.

This a Canon EOS 400D camera to take all of the images for my magazine pages. Although I have several cameras laying about the house, this is the most professional one that we own, and it would produce the most 'professional looking' images. So, considering that my job was to create a conventional, professional looking magazine, so this was the camera I decided to use. When I was taking pictures though, because the camera is quite heavy it was quite annoying to take around everywhere, so if I was to do something like this again, I would perhaps use a different camera. I did manage to get some good quality images using it though, so maybe it was worth it.

I only used SoundCloud once for my third evaluation question. It's a good programme to use as you can share it to Blogger really easily. I can't imagine needing to use it very much if you were creating a magazine, but it came in quite useful for me, so I wouldn't completely knock it.

I used YouTube twice in my project as I had to use its services to host the videos that I had created using iMovie and a camcorder. It takes quite a long time to upload the videos, especially if you want to upload the video in quite high quality.

I used GIFmaker (gifmaker.me) to create GIFs to animate my blog and make it pop. It was really easy to use and the results were great.

Powtoon was a useful tool in terms of helping me to produce the work for my blog. I found it very complicated and confusing when I first used it but by the end of this course work stage, I  felt  that I’d mastered it.

I thought I was familiar with Flickr before this process since I had used it a couple of times but I probably wouldn't ever use it again, unless it was entirely necessary as it was so confusing and the site updated itself since I last used it. It was quite hard to understand and I couldn't really find my way around it very well. I also couldn’t find a way to share the pictures I had taken to blogger as I had used it to display my contents page shots, so I ended up screenshotting the page and upload that screen shot with the link to the pictures, so I probably wouldn't ever use it again unless I really needed to.


To conclude, what I’ve learnt from this process is that despite the fact that there are a lot of disadvantages to using technology and it can be very, very unreliable, I would have never been able to anything without it, and my magazines wouldn't even exist today without it.

~*Evaluation Question 5*~

How did you attract/address your audience?

 To find out what would attract my audience, I had to do research into existing magazines on the market. After looking at VIBE and Rolling Stone magazine, I found that although their genre of music was different, the style in which they sent pages out would be good for my target audience, as it gets a lot of information onto the pages, but in a suitable format to read, being broken up by pictures. VIBE magazine, normally have a dominant image on 1 page, and a lot of text on another. This might bore my target audience, as the younger you are, the shorter your attention span, and a lot of text with no images may be daunting for them to read, therefore I chose not to use there method.

I asked to those people who brought magazines, what magazines they brought. I thought that because my sample was so small, that I should research that on a bigger scale as the results were already collected for me to access via the internet on the national readership survey website.  After looking at the research, I found that XXL and NME was mostly brought by people ages 16-25. And VIBE and Rolling Stone magazine was mostly brought by the same age category. It was pretty conclusive that I should aim my magazine at younger years within this category, as it seems a successful one to chose, considering how successful those magazines are.

Then I need to focus on what I would need to fill the magazine with. So I asked people what they like about the magazines they would buy. Results shown that the majority of people researched said the price and the content inside the magazine. This meant I would have to focus on getting the right price for the magazine to sell and getting quality and a great layout content that people would want to read.

The next thing I had to focus on was what time of genre of music should my magazine specialize in. Results were pretty inconclusive as most people liked almost every kind of music I listed, and after looking around at other magazine, I found that only Q magazine covered all genres of music. As my magazine fitted into a niche market, I decided to use VIBE’s idea of covering hip hop and RnB genres which would be perfect for the age group I aimed for. Therefore I would not be losing out to anyone choosing to buy VIBE over my magazine or not purchasing my magazine at all, as it’s not the same target audience.

I also added social media forums which the audience can contact and keep up to date with.