To The Examiner

Hello! I am Jack and I'd just like to welcome you to my blog and I hope you enjoy the work you see. I think I have drastically improved in terms of knowledge and skills throught this project, and I hope you will see this too. All of my posts are labelled so you can find my planning and research easily, I put in a lot of effort into this research so I could aqquire the ability to produce a good magazine. I hope you can see this through my Front  Cover, Contents and Double Page Spread. Finally, I hope you enjoy my blog :)

Final Evaluation Question 7

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?

 The changes and improvements in my cover were very drastic. The overall quality of my product has vastly improved and this makes the magazine look a lot better. The main improvements were the photography and the typography. As you can see in my preliminary school cover the font size is very large and the fonts do not match each other, their is too much contrast and all the fonts are out of proportion and out of line with each other. This gives it a less proffesional feel. I had to improve this with my final piece as I wanted to reach my full potentially and creating something that looks proffesional and feels realistic. I belived I have achieved this as my font choices are much better and the smaller size makes it look aesthetically pleasing. The long rugged fonts also fit my rock and roll genre as they are quite messy and casual.

The main improvement with my contents page was the layout choice. I decided to choose only one main picture for the page and have a strip displaying the actual features and contents of my magazine. This is much more appealing than my preliminary contents as the text isnt all scattered, it is organised and layed out correctly so the reader can easily follow down the side to find a specific piece of content they want to read. This makes my content as much more efficient page, but it also makes it much more aesthetically pleasing.


My camera shots in the front covers have changed drastically. First of all, in my preliminary task my model wasnt even looking at the camera, her face was not revealed, this reduced the impact the shot could of had, which overall made it seem less proffesional. Compared to my final front cover shot, my model is looking at the camera and the lighting is a lot better and the shot has an overall better quality. Making the page feel cleaner. I have stuck with a mid-shot for my magazine as I feel it is the best way to represent a model on the front cover, without making them too big or small. The cutting out on my shots in my final product was much better also, as you can see there is a massive difference in my preliminary task and my final magazine. There are no jagged lines that make the magazine look amatuer. The pictures remain clean and therefore give my magazine a much more proffesional feel.

The layout of the magazine as a whole has also improved lots, for example the spacing and size of my coverlines changed from my preliminary magazine to my final. This made them smaller and spaced together much more making the cover seem more bunched and full, this stops any vast amounts of space being used. The cover lines have also increased in quantity as from looking at my school magazine I felt that it was way too bland and boring, nothing exciting was there to catch a readers' eye. This is why I used the more ambitious and outrageous fonts to represent bands in my cover lines for my final front cover.

The most significant learning curve I found was my ability to expand into a more, confident, and varied style. Taking specific examples from my preliminary and my final task. I managed to develop my skills on photoshop (and within photography itself) to allow a much better finished product. Even smaller details like the date and issue numbers on the cover. As you can see the font is very small on my final, yet very large and unneccesary on my preliminary task, little details like this have hopefully gave my final product as much better finished look. I also went for a much more generic colour scheme on my final product, this allowed me to get a guarenteed proffesional look, I did this because I learnt from my preliminary task that those colours I chose were making my magazine look childish/amatuer.

I believe I have also imnproved significantly with my magazine terms. Learning these by looking at severl other similar magazines allowed me to learn what is needed to make a successful house style. This is shown through my font sizes from the preliminary school magazine task to my final magazine. As the fonts are very large with non-standard spacing between them, this made the pages look empty and spacious. This would put off a reader as they would not think the magazine contains that much information as it is so empty. Whereas my final font choices and spacing fit the genre really well and make the overall page look filled with information.

Here are the examples of the different cover line fonts and spacing, this shows how much of an improvement I have made from my preliminary task to my final product.

I am very happy with how my coverlines turned out, I feel that have a raw and intense feel that fits with my genre and style. I especially like the specific fonts for different bands. This makes them stand out and fans of the band will be instantly drawn in as they would recognise the band font/logo.

Final Evaluation Question 6

I have used many media's and products to create my magazine, here I give examples and explain why I used them and how the helped me achieve my finished product.

The Internet has helped me carry out all the reasearch that I needed to do before I begun designing my product. This allowed me to understand existing products and figure out how to construct a magazine that looks proffesional and realistic. I used search engines like google to find the examples of magazines that I could work from. I also used sites like http://www.dafont.com/ to look for appropiate fonts and typeface, I then used these fonts I have chosen in my final product.

Photoshop has been used by me thoughroughly during this project. I am not that familiar with the program, this is apparent in my preliminary magazine. But during the project I have developed and learnt skills on Photoshop and that I belive has allowed me to produce a proffesional magazine. It allowed me to construct the magazine, for example importing images and cutting them out, using the magic wand tool, text colour and spacing, plus it allowed me to build up the layout of my magazine in a way that made it seem proffesional.

Microsoft Word has helped me write my double page spread article. This is a much more appropiate program to write a long worded article on, compared to Microsoft Publisher or doing the text on the actual Photoshop file. It helped me spell check my work and also checks for gramatical mistakes.

This is the digital camera I used to take the photos





 on my FINAL magazine. It is a Panasonic Lumix

TZ10. This magazine is a 12.1 megapixel with intelligent resolution technology 16x Intelligent zoom. This allowed me to compose to high quality shots that allowed my magazine to look more appealing and proffesional. If a comparison is made between my preliminary piece and my draft, to my final piece, the quality difference is very clear, especially evident due to the better lighting I used for my final piece, but also due to the higher quality camera.

  

This is the logo for the web program Scribd. It allowed me to upload all of my research and planning tasks, from looking and evaluating multiple magazines to research on different font types. It is a very easy and fast program, after making an account I can use this whenever I want to upload word documents or publisher files onto my blog.

I used the website Animoto, this allows you to create videos that you can upload images and text to, with the added feature of adding your own music in the background. I used this for my pitch as I found it an engaging and effective method, compared to a Power Point for example. It allows the presentation to flow without the user having to click or press any other buttons. I also used this to answer my previous Evaluation Question 3. I found this useful in that task as it was an effective method to choose, as the use of images allowed me to cut down on text which makes it boring for a reader and less interesting.

                                                                                   

I also used another website that allowed me to make a presentation that moves in very intersting way that engage the reader. Prezi works in a way similar to Microsoft PowerPoint but it is far more intersting and engaging. Instead of moving through slides it moves along the page through a path the user can create, whilst allowing you to add text, images and even videos. You can find me using this in Evaluation Question 1.

Final Evaluation Question 5

Final Evaluation Question 4

Here is a picture of someone of the same style and age as my general target audience. This typical reader would be very into quite heavy, fast music, this is a main attraction to my magazine, he would be happy there is a new magazine in the market as the conventional rock magazines KERRANG and Rock Sound are perhaps getting boring due to their repetitiveness. So it is nice for him to get a fresh new magazine.

This reader typicall buys a lot of t-shirts from the internet of his favourite bands, these allow him to express hisself and show his taste. He is always listening to music, whenver he gets the chance. For example on the bus home from college, also at home when doing things like homework. The reason he reads my magazine is because of his interests in the specific artists that feature in my issue, he likes to find out about new music so the main coverline 'Introducing IN BLOOM' will instantly grab his attention as he wants to be introduced to new music.

Final Evaluation Question 3

Final Evaluation Question 2

The artist I have compared and related my model to is Hayley Williams, she is the lead singer from the rock band Paramore. Her bright red and orange hair is a main feautre of her band and is usually played on in their magazine shoots and photoshoots. For example they will focus on the brightness of her hair and make the props red or the writing red etc. This brings out her hair. The hair she has is a unique aspect of the band because not many bands have women singers for one, let alone with brightly coloured hair. I think she is similar to my model in this way and I tried to replicate this method used by many other magazines on the market by replicating the hair colour and adding it as the main feature in my colour scheme.





I also believe they are different in some ways, as Hayley Williams seems a bit more confident with herself and is comforatable at doing the more outrageous poses in her magazine shoots. Whereas my model clearly is not as confident, just a bit shy in what she is doing, eventhough her poses still make her look good and like a confident singer. This is why I didnt want a pose that was too intense and out there, just more of a suttle one, because the personality I tried to create was that of a shy vocalist.