final magazine

evaluation

Digital technology Voki

I explain how I found using technology while making my magazine.

Magazine Evaluation from peers

This is the feedback that some of my peers gave me for my final magazine. I refer to this in my magazine evaluation.

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

For my preliminary task I made a magazine called ‘Haydon Weekly’. I made a front cover and a contents page. My product has vastly improved and I now have a music magazine called InD with a front page, contents page, double page spread and four more pages for the article. Firstly my use and understanding of InDesign has improved. At first I didn’t really know how to use the programme as I had never used it before, but by the end of my music magazine, I could confidently use it and make my magazine look like a real product. Also, my use of Photoshop improved vastly. I didn’t even use it in my preliminary task as you can see I used the entire picture on the front cover and didn’t even cut out the back ground.

On the front cover of my preliminary task the proto I used of a year 7 is positioned very low on the page, this makes the magazine background take up a lot of room as I haven’t zoomed it in to fit properly. Also it is out of proportion as I zoomed the picture in and didn’t hold down shift so it was stretched wider than it should have been, making the model look big. The mast head is also very low on the page and in the middle which is not following the codes and conventions of magazines. In my full product I have my mast head in the top left corner, this makes the product look more professional as it looks like a general magazine and not amateur. Furthermore, I have sell lines across my models face in my preliminary task and underneath that I have bullet points on my front cover. This does not look good compared to my full product which has the sell lines underneath the models or on their body’s not their faces. This was easier to do because I had my models further up on the page rather than low down and they were photo shopped so fit better on the page.  Also, my preliminary task also has other photos on the front cover, whereas my full product has a button with text in. This makes it look more mature as I haven’t used blurry pictures or not photo shopped images on top of another image used as the main picture. The text I used on my preliminary task was in many different fonts and colours which does not follow the codes and conventions of magazines. On the other hand my full product used a few main fonts and 3 colours. This makes it look professional and like a proper magazine.

Moving on to my contents page, my preliminary task again used photos which were not photo shopped and of poor quality. This shows how my photo shop skills have improved and my eye for a good photo. Also the pictures are now relevant to the text on the page rather than just random pictures. In addition, my contents page contains text, this is all in different styles and looks very plain. In my final task I have used paragraph styles, this makes my contents page look more consistent and therefore the overall style is better. I have also used white text with an outline on a white background, this means it doesn’t stand out at all. On my final product I have used text which is consistent in the colour scheme and stands out to my audience. The overall layout of my magazine has also improved, it is no longer just a few lines, it has pictures which identify with the text and is all in line rather than little bits sticking out. Also the page numbers in my preliminary task only go up to 6, this is not enough for a real magazine so in my full task I have put numbers up to 120. This shows how my knowledge of magazines and constructing one has improved.

To compare the two products further, I have improved my content by having double page spreads and an article in my full product rather than just a front cover and contents page. The makes the product more realistic and professional. The use of columns in my final products also shows how my skills and knowledge has developed as I did not know how to do this in my preliminary task. I have also photo shopped images and learnt how to edit text so I have some that is bold and some that stands out more through making certain parts bigger than others. I have also learnt how to caption pictures so they have more meaning and the reader know why they are there. I also learnt how to use shortcuts in InDesign to make my production a lot faster, for example, Ctrl+[ was send backward rather than having to right click>arrange>send backwards. This sped up the making of my magazine a lot and also the short cut of Ctrl+z to undo when I went wrong to undo. Overall, my knowledge and understanding of InDesign improved a lot, also my skill of Photoshop and InDesign and other media based programmes improved a lot.

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

I used many different technologies to produce my magazine which all benefitted me. For my magazines I used a canon 550D to take my pictures. I took 216 photos in my first photo-shoot. This was a very successful photo-shoot for me as I had lots of photos to choose from, however I found a lot of them were either unusable or I did not like them as sometimes the lighting was difficult to work with. I used Interfit Stellar X Lights in the studio with a big white and black background with a Neewer RT16 wireless flash trigger which helped me a lot as I did not have to worry about the flash that I used as it was automatic. It was also a huge advantage to have artificial lighting in the studio as I would find it very difficult to find the time to take photos with natural light. Also, natural light is harder to edit with on photo shop as the light can be uneven. I did a photo-shoot up in London as well with my models. I took 155 photos. These were

Using a digital camera rather than a film one made my magazine a lot easier to produce. This is because the photos were instantly available to me using a flash disk to transfer them from the SD card across to the computer. The only disadvantage of using a digital camera meant the photos were not a high quality as a film camera, but this did not matter to me as I was not blowing my pictures up on a massive scale. Another advantage of using a digital camera was my photos were easier to manipulate. I could take them straight from my computer on to Photoshop and change the colours and cut out the backgrounds to make the pictures look nicer for my magazine. Also, I could manipulate the pictures to make my models look better, if I had a film camera I would not be able to do this as easily. Also, I was able to take so many more pictures as the photos were all stored on a memory card, and I didn’t have to change the film every 36 pictures. This also made it cheaper as I didn’t have to develop any photos and wait to see what pictures I had taken, they were available for me to look at straight after I took the picture. I also used a  50mm f1.8 aperture lens while up in London so I could blur the back ground of my pictures and just focus on the models. This added a great effect and made the model the attraction of the photo. The other lens I used was an 18-55 f3.5-5.6 zoom lens. This was great for when I wanted close ups and full body shots. It kept the quality of the photo high while being able to shoot ad different zooms. This made my photos high quality for my magazine. I was also able to use another camera for my time lapse in the studio. This took a photo every 10 seconds so I could then use adobe premiere to stitch all the photos together and made a video which showed behind the scenes at my photo-shoot. During this video it showed me adjusting the lights for the different backgrounds and

My skills of using InDesign have greatly improved as you can tell from my preliminary task. I now know how to use it to structure a magazine following the codes and conventions of a music magazine. Also, my photo shop skills have improved as I can now take out the back ground of pictures of my models and put them with other pictures to make them look closer together, this helps my magazine look better as I can zoom in my pictures and make it look more intense. I can also edit my photos so I airbrushed my models. This greatly improved the image of my magazine as it made the overall quality better.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Before I started making my magazine, I did lots of market research on my target audience. I did a survey to find out their interests to do with music, how much they would be willing to pay and other various questions. Firstly, the main image on my front cover is likely to bring in my audience as either males will identify with the band or females will enjoy reading about it. The names used on the front cover are a mixture of new and established artists. This is good for my target audience as they want to hear about both, not just well known artists. Also the sell lines are what will attract the attention of my audience as my target market enjoy stories like ‘Past year touring’ or ‘Rising to fame’ as they prefer up and coming artists so the new artists will attract them. The mast head is also important as it is InD, which is the style of music my target market listen to and this clever abbreviation of it will catch their eyes. I used the same house style of red black and white to keep it gender neutral, this helps to bring the audience in so they didn’t feel intimidated by any other gender specific colours. My button on the front cover has a Buzz Word, “win”. This is likely to grab the reader’s attention as they will want to buy it if they have the chance to win something for free.

My images all throughout the magazine are either looking straight into the camera or not. The ones that are looking directly into the camera are communicating with the audience and the ones that aren’t, they send the vibe of the interest in the music and not the fame which the audience like. My double page spread also has a large picture across the whole of it, this breaks up all the text allowing the reader have a break so they do not get bored of just text.

In my article, I have an additional feature of an album review, this attracts the audience as they are interested in music as they just bought a music magazine. This additional feature is unique to my magazine and give it a unique selling point which my audience cannot find anywhere else. I also have a unique photo of a concert which I took myself. The addresses the reader as they are interested in concerts and gigs so they see the magazine as more authentic and personal. My magazine is a music magazine, so according to the used and gratification theory (Blumler & Katz 1974), my target market are using my magazine for identifying with valued others. This will make them feel better about themselves and that they can connect with the people in my magazine. They also use my magazine for finding out about relevant events and conditions in immediate surroundings, society and the world. They want to know what is going on in the world so read my magazine InD. Also they use my magazine to gain insight into circumstances of others; social empathy. This means they want to use my magazine to find out information about the world around them as they have an interest in what happens in the music industry. The final use for my magazine is for relaxation. InD is to read in your spare time.

The use of social media in my magazine and the internet also makes a connection with the target market as they are young so they are more likely to be online. This means they can interact further with the magazine rather than just reading it. These online interactions include Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and a YouTube channel. These are all for the magazine InD which lead to further information about the magazine and information inside. The audience will see this as another unique selling point and be attracted to the magazine.

Overall, my effort to attract the target market and audience has been successful in my opinion, according to my feedback from friends and family, my magazine has many features which draws them in and as they found out more. Also, the pictures and content I used are successful in attracting an audience.