Sunday, 27 April 2014

Evaluation 7) Looking back at my preliminary activity task, what do I feel I've learnt in the progression from it?

My School Magazine

 


My Music Magazine






Comparing my Music Magazine to my School magazine you can see the improvements, through the use of visual syntax, use of colour and house style. The improvements were made through my skills developing and spending more time on it, which meant my music magazine front cover would be of better quality and standard. From the preliminary activity I learnt the codes and conventions of a magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread. All of which I’ve discussed here: http://padlet.com/edenparke3/l529hbhtrk. Because I learnt the conventions of a front cover, it helped me create an effect and visually appealing product. Some key features of a front cover are: the image, visual syntax, the masthead and headline, font size variation for emphasis, and use of colour. In my school magazine, I didn’t have a good choice of colour, wrong font size variation and the banner I added along the side was not in a good place. Contrasting that to my music magazine cover you can see that my image is now clear, with the coverlines curving around my artists face creating a good visual syntax, my masthead is clear and the colour scheme works a lot better. A good visual syntax also comes from the image that you use. During the creation process I learnt that I would need to take an effective picture for my front cover, in order to get my audience’s attention, and interest. I learnt about the different types of shot you can take, and at different heights and lighting can affect and the image. In addition I learnt that you needed to carefully plan a photoshoot, rather than just taking pictures anywhere. I learnt this during my preliminary when I took pictures for my school magazine; you could see the background quite clearly, thus making the pictures look unprofessional, but when I took the time to plan for my music magazine, I knew I needed a clear background of either white or black to make the overall image of my artist look better. Also, when constructing a front cover, I found that it’s easier to make the cover look more visually appealing when you have just one central image with one person rather than two, because having one gives you more room to add more features of a magazine.  
When I was researching and planning my school magazine, I had to look into finding my target audience; with this I would have to look into the age of the people I’m targeting, gender, beliefs and social groups. Following on from this I found that I would have two types of audience: My primary and secondary. My primary audience would be the people that go to the school, so 11-19 year olds, both male and female; and then my secondary audience would be people who might be reading the magazine second hand, for example parents, or older siblings.
I feel my school magazine contents page is better than the front cover; this is because the layout is a lot better and you can see my house style coming through. I used the schools logo as the background, thus carrying on the brand identity of the school, as well as the school colours of red, black and white. The idea of a consistent house style and brand identity helped me in the creation of my music magazine, when I used the same three colours of peach, blue and white, and the same font through each design. I also created several moodboards to help visually represent my target audience. After I created my school magazine, I started the research into music magazines. When starting this I learnt about the brand identity of a product, which is what you see that you associate with the magazine or product, so if you see the Masthead, you will recognise it and know it belongs to that specific brand. I then created a questionnaire to find my target audience. When doing this I learnt about the JICNAR Scale and whether a person would be in the ABC1 part or C2DE.When I gathered all of my results, I presented my results in graphs and charts so show my results more clearly.
http://edenparke.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/questionnaire-analysis.html


In conclusion I feel that I have learnt a lot from the preliminary activity, and without it, I know my final products would not have been as successful or developed. 











Evaluation 6) What have I learnt about technologies in process of constructing my product?

Throughout the creating process of my products, I have used multiple programs to do the research, design and creation of them. From each of them I have learnt different things which helped me to create my final products.

All the programs that I have used when creating my products were: Blogspot, Fireworks, Flikr, Picmonkey.com, Padlet, Prezi, Dafont.com,

To start with, I used Microsoft PowerPoint to create design plan of what my school magazines front cover would look like. I then transferred that over to Fireworks and created my first mock up of the school front cover. When creating my school magazine front cover I learnt how to use the kerning too
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To keep all my development, research and products in one place, I had to use Blogspot. I learnt how to create my blog, and update posts on it, with both images and text. Also, I learnt how to embed files from other programs like Padlet for example. When I used Padlet it allowed me to present my final products, explaining how I challenged, and conformed to the conventions of a magazine. http://padlet.com/edenparke3/l529hbhtrk
 An additional technology I used was Prezi. Prezi allowed me to present my analysis on a media product, discussing the products background, its front cover, contents page and double page spread. http://edenparke.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/prezi-nme-analysis.html
From Padlet and Prezi I learnt how to present my products and research in a new way without using Microsoft PowerPoint.

I used the website Flikr to store all of the pictures I took for my music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread. Flikr gave me the knowledge that I can keep my images on this website, rather than keeping them on one computer or a memory stick, which is more accessible. http://www.flickr.com/photos/115759525@N07

When digitally editing my photos there was a number of editing technologies I could use, but the one I primarily used was Picmonkey.com. I used Picmonkey to edit my pictures, experimenting with adjusting the contrast making the picture livelier, change the filter, crop it or change the colour making the image look more visually appealing.
Not only could I use Picmonkey.com for editing my pictures, but Fireworks as-well. From Fireworks I learnt that I could use the magic wand tool to individual select things so I could edit them, which was really helpful. I learnt how to re-adjust an image, without damaging the image.

Because there weren’t many visually appealing fonts on Fireworks’ I had to find another source where I could import one in for my product. With this I found a website called Dafont.com. Dafont had a variety of different fonts suitable for my magazine. I used multiple fonts from here to help create my Headline on my front cover and my masthead. With the magic wand tool I learnt how to use when editing my picture, I used that knowledge to help change the colour of both my headline and masthead.



Monday, 7 April 2014

Evaluation 5) How did you attract / address your audience?

1) Front Cover Thinglink
2) Contents Page Thinglink
3) Double Page Spread Thinglink

Evaluation 4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

My ideal reader would be someone aged between 16-20, in either school, college or university. My ideal reader would be in that age range because stereotypically younger people know more about new music, and are more interested in it, and because my magazine features some new bands, I feel as if it would appeal to them, rather than an older audience.
They should be into non conventional fashions, and buy their clothing from shops like Urban Outfitters, Oasis market, and Cow, not only that but they should be interested in buying the bands merchandise, like clothing, and posters etc, and take influence from the artists they look up to, on how they dress.
 They should be interested in alternative rock music, and look to spending money on going to gigs, on both known artists and up-coming, also with an interest in buying things like vinyl's. Even though they should have an interest for new music, they should still be into old bands.
They should use social media sites like Twitter and Facebook as a way to socialise, and listen to music either through Itunes, Spotify and Soundcloud.
My ideal reader should enjoy going out with their friends  and will attend these festivals with them due to their similar interests.
They should have or aspire to have quite up to date phones like iPhones, Samsungs, and HTC’s, which they can access all social media, and music on.