Foundation production portfolio evaluation

After handing in my original final music magazine, I realised I could make far better one and get a higher grade on it. My original magazine looked too cheap and the entire layout of it looked more like a children’s magazine than an adults who appreciate professional looking magazines with articles to read rather than questions and answers. My target audience was teenagers through to early twenties and I came to realise that they wouldn’t look twice at this magazine on a shelf as there isn’t one particular part of it which stands out or keeps attention. It looks unorganised and not well enough structured. When re working my magazine I had to keep my audience in mind and keep the look and feel of it both adult and professional. But before designing and making my front cover I had to keep the task brief in mind while I analysed and looked at a lot of existing music magazines to gain knowledge of key conventions, layouts and styles which relate to their target audience. Whilst analysing current magazines I picked up on every magazines masthead being clear, easy to see if it was on a shelf and they also maintained a consistent house style to the magazine. These features allow a magazines name to be iconic and memorable for an audience giving it identification. I achieved this by calling the magazine ‘Rewind’ but spelling it backwards to look like it’s almost been rewound on itself. I also used a banner headline to attract my audience towards it to then pick it up or even buy it but when reworking my original concept, I ended up with a light blue banner headline as opposed to the original red one to go against the masthead I kept red but changed into text rather than painting it in which made it look far more professional and expensive whilst remaining eye catching and clear to see. Another convention I used was a strap line underneath the banner headline to give the reader more information about the main story to tempt them further to buy it. This strap line has similar effect to my sell lines which give the reader a taste as to what is happening inside the magazine. Throughout my magazine I used most of the traditional conventions such as page numbering in the bottom corners, a drop cap for the first letter of my article, a 'NEW' and 'THE GUIDE' section for the contents page and a pull quote from the artist in the middle of the article. When re creating my double page, I included a second pull quote and made more text for the reader to look at as the original one had too many big pictures taking the space of much needed text to balance it out and relate to what my target audience wanted according to my online poll. These are conventions which the audience expect to see which I maintained for a modern look to the magazine as the genre of music is always up to date and being updated weekly with the music charts being available for everyone. I also used a few different colours, sizes and styles of text within my magazine to liven it up and make it less boring to read long pieces of text as it gives the impression of splitting it up a bit. In my reworked edition, I used the same colour headline on the double page to make it instantly related to the banner headline on the front page to show it’s the same story. I also used a background to the headline of a piece of graffiti I cropped from a photo I took and used on the contents page. I thought this looked modern and related back to the R ‘n’ B side to these artists music. I also took out the questions and answers I first had as I thought it looked a bit too young and my age readers would rather have an article about what’s happening to a band they love and where they are going. I kept the opening paragraph a different colour to the rest of the font as this allows the reader to read the text more fluently and see that the black text is an introduction. I also included a second pull quote in my reworked article text to create the effect of the main or best quotes being highlighted from the rest of the text to emphasise it and make it stand out to a potential buyer flicking through the magazine. I also typically made the title of each page the largest text on the page to allow easy viewing of this and to show which part is most important to read first. On my front cover I used a puff to advertise a competition within the magazine which had the prize of an expensive piece of equipment which is very appealing to my teenage to mid twenty’s audience who consume a lot of these products. The prizes I advertised are also expensive in relation to most head phones and media products currently on the market so I thought I would differ it a bit whilst keeping prizesscreamo style of music which you would connote with light colours such as pink and yellow whereas modern pop music is colourful and vibrant which I made sure reflected within my magazine while making sure it didn’t look like a kids magazine. I changed the colours of the text on the front cover in my revised magazine as the first one I made looked like a kids magazine with random bits stuck on here and there with no real direction or focus to it. The main image looked as important as the advertisements. In my remodelled one, the cover lines are clear and distinguished, all the same colours for them to show they are the same and they fit nicely around my main image which catches the eye through the lighting effects I put behind the picture to make it stand out more and be easily noticed. When I made the original magazine, the main photo was of me at a prom night with my girlfriend which I thought was a good idea to use for an awards night. I liked this concept but the photo was not appropriate. I maintained this concept in my re made magazine but used the paint tool and placed images onto a black background to slowly but surely create the look of an awards night photo area on a red carpet. I think this looks very good and anyone who is interested in music would instantly know it’s an awards night from the whole layout of it. The lighting effects I placed behind the picture also made it look like big flashing cameras to connote these people as celebrities to the audience. My images also had to allow the reader to know who the image was of so they could relate to their musical heroes without having to flick through every page. I used two devices to take photos which were my 8.1 mega pixel mobile phone camera and the 12 mega pixel college cameras. I used the mobile camera for convenience as I had to rent out the college ones for a certain period of time as they weren’t mine. My phone camera proved grainier than the college one which showed a clear difference in the quality of images throughout draft stages. I then used my USB memory stick to hold and transport any mobile images to the college laptops where I could amend them using Photo shop. My magazine has the USP of advertising many highly sought after products or items of clothing which are very expensive and worn daily by the biggest pop and R ‘n’ B stars. It also aims to capture the best music stars from every music genre to represent the whole field of music. Before I started this media project I hadn’t used Photo shop or Blogger but with me re making my magazine I had a chance to get more familiar with them both and really improve on them and learn more about them. Blogger was very useful in uploading drafts and photos quickly and with the added bonus of being able to annotate them easily. When I had got to grips with this site, it proved vital to showing the progression in my work and allowing everyone to see it develop and see how the idea came about and what elements were shaping the magazine such as audience feedback through widgets like Polls on the site for friends to answer. However Photo shop proved slow to load up at first before being able to change any images but once loaded was a vital tool in shaping my magazine. In the first few months I found this software very difficult to use as it has many features but I feel I have progressed a lot with my ability on Photo shop and have a far greater knowledge on this programme to annotate images. Without Photo shop I couldn’t have got a magazine anywhere near as good as it is now. I spent many hours on this software when re making my magazine to get my pictures exactly how I wanted them and with so many editing options available on Photo shop it soon became apparent that I had a key tool on hand to make my images perfect. On my double page, the three photos next to each other took a long time to perfect and get to a point where they are now which I think are a huge improvement to any photo I had in my original magazine. I actually got the idea of putting them together in a line off a Face book image I saw at one stage where a boy had gone into a changing room and took photos of himself with three different outfits and photo shopped them next to each other. I thought it looked really good and had an idea when re working my magazine to use it to show the three band members but make them look glamorous by not only wearing sunglasses but putting lighting effects behind and in front of the pictures to look brighter and like they are modelling for a new clothing range or something. I also used Photo shop to paint a red ‘carpet’ under the feet of the people in my picture on the front cover of my improved product to look more like a real red carpet photo shoot. On my new front cover I also used the rectangle shape tools with them filled in white to allow the text for the cover lines to easily be seen against the light main image I had created. It also meant I could maintain a consistent house style by choosing the same colour scheme to the boxes and text to what I had around the rest of the updated magazine. Also, the contents page on the reworked magazine was far better in terms of organisation on the page and looked like it all had a place and overall looked a lot more professional. I also used the same background colour (white) on each page after the front cover to keep that consistent as on my first magazine I had orange pages and gold pages which just didn’t look up to much and needed changing to be appealing to readers my age. After looking through and reading the Q magazine I felt on my re worked model I could further improve the contents page by putting different coloured fonts around it to highlight the importance of some stories from others as well as making font bigger or bold. I also picked up on a little coloured line between a page number and the title of the story which I thought looked great so I incorporated this feature on to my new, updated product which looks far busier and more eye catching. Blogger was also easy to use during the researching process as it was easy to comment on any images I had or scanned onto the site. I also discovered whilst re working my magazine that using animations of Go animate and Prezi presentations on my blog would largely improve it and make my research more focused and made It look organised and grouped it nicely together with all the information similar. The animations looked fun and modern giving my blog a new format to looking at and consuming information I had put on there. Whilst taking photos I had to consider the setting for each photo, the position of each model, the posture, position and facial expression they all had as well as making sure I got a good quality image. This meant taking lots of photos so I could later pick which suited what story better depending on lighting and quality. Looking back at my first piece of media I produced compared to my reworked one I feel I have come a long way due to the fact that I have learnt a lot about the media industry and not only how it works but how the audience interpret it from what they see. The main reason alongside gained knowledge for me improving so much is feedback and help as well as new skills I have got from software such as Photo shop and Blogger and extra knowledge from sites such as Go animate and Prezi which really brought together information and allowed me to see what needed improving and what was good. Even from my college magazine to my music magazine first submission, I improved a vast amount due to learning the proper names for terms such as cover lines, headlines, mastheads and puffs as opposed to calling them adverts or stories. This would always improve my evaluation skills and analytical skills by knowing these media terms. Since my college magazine I also learnt over time how to fill the page with things I needed rather than just for the sake of it and learnt that sometime a simple image or layout is far more effective than a congested, packed one with lots going on. I also learnt that when it comes to music, taste really dictates what the layout, style and colour schemes are to suit the genre of music it entails within it. These skills were key to making the transition from a college magazine to a music one. Also, the key reason is my development in using the like of Photo shop which are critical to the success in designing the magazine pages as knowing what your doing on this software can really up your grade and make it look much better. If my magazine were to be published now I think it would benefit most from being published by Bauer Media who currently produce the Q magazine which is the UK’s best selling magazine and the Q magazine targets people similar to my target audience which is a proven seller so many of the Q magazine subscribers would be willing to give my magazine a chance as it contains their interests and favourite genres (Pop and R ‘n’ B) of music. This would best advertise my magazine and spread the word about it with so many of Bauer’s magazine consumers visiting their website. If I were to re make this product again I would allocate more time to checking everything over and making sure it sounded and looked correct. I would also maybe add another small picture to the contents page to liven it up and make the readers eyes brake up from just text. I would also think about taking out the graffiti block behind the headline on the double page and make it to a colour more easily distinguishable from the colour of the text. And finally, I would probably make the main image on the front cover a bit bigger to fill the page more and look a bit more dominant. Other than that though I think my reworked version is far better and would sell well in shops as it would be very appealing to me and people my age with similar tastes.


Here are some responses i collected from friends and family about my new re submitted final product:


                                                                      Luke Mitchell

Danny Mitchell

Mum