Guess what!?

Finished my coursework FINALLY, pretty happy with my finished product and it's so useful to know how to use alot more programs! Let's just hope I haven't jinxed it saying i've done everything *fingers crossed*

Evaluation

Introduction 

'That's Rock!' Is a classical rock magazine. It is aimed mostly at teenagers which is why the price of the magazine will be kept lower but because of its varied artist may be appealing to an middle ages age group as well. The magazine uses a typical colour scheme of black, red and white with fonts and pictures that reflect the magazines genre. It includes everything a reader wants from a rock magazine such as; interviews with popular artists, album releases and much more. 'That's Rock!' aims to stand out from other rock magazines but still be familiar to its target readers it includes stories that shows a different side to each artist and how music has helped their life.

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

PREZI

 

Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

VOICE RECORDING

Q3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

POWERPOINT

 

Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

POWERPOINT

 

Q5. How did you attract/address your audience?

MULTIMEDIA VIDEO

 

WRITTEN REPORT

The questions I asked were;

• What would you say 'That's Rock!'s strengths are?
• Compared to other magazines within the rock genre do you think ‘That's Rock!’ fits in with the style/layout?
• What would attract you to this magazine if you saw it?
• Do you think the title and background of the front cover reflects the mood of rock music?

The main strengths identified by the focus group was the colour scheme and how it related to the music genre, this achieved a main target as I wanted people to instantly recognize what kind of music genre 'That's Rock!' belongs to. The weaknesses that were recognized were the fact the head of my 'celebrity' didn't go in front of the title, this was down to my own personal error of taking the photo and not getting all of his head in shot but I don't feel it made a huge effect on the overall effect of the front cover. The focus group also agreed that the dark colours used in the front cover and contents page went with the style and layout of a rock magazine well but a weakness that was recognized would be the font I used for the page numbers, saying it was too plain, I agree with this but as the page already felt quite crowded I didn't want it to look too 'busy'. The focus group said that the typography used would attract them to the magazine as it stood out and was different from other magazines, this is because I didn't use a standard font but one downloaded from a website to make certain writing fit my genre better. I had never conducted a focus group before but I felt it helped alot as I was able to find out what a range of people thought was good and bad about my magazine.

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

WRITTEN REPORT 

Photography

Photography was a really important part of this task, for my prelim task it wasn’t as important to get the perfect photo that could easily be edited as it was just a practice which is why I didn’t pick days to take the photos when it was perfect lighting outside and I didn’t take a lot of photos whereas in the real thing as it was just about experimenting seeing what worked for the actual music magazine and look most professional. How good the picture taken would’ve effected the quality of the magazine and how realistic it was as a music magazine which is why it was important to get the perfect shots. Before this course work I was familiar with taking pictures, but didn’t know how to make my photos look professional. After completing this piece of course work I have more knowledge of how to make the lighting compliment the photo and what sort of photo fits a certain music genre. The problems I faced was that I wasn’t confident directing the photo shoot, so having some experience with this now I can easily direct the person I am photographing to achieve the kind of picture I need. Another problem that effected later tasks with photoshop is some of my photos had cut the top of my ‘celebrities’ head off which made it harder to edit. 

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop was a key part in making my photos as professional as I could to make ‘That’s Rock!’ like a real music magazine. The spot healing tool seemed to make a big difference to the picture I used for my front cover as my ‘celebrity’ didn’t have really clear skin, this meant I could use this tool to make their face look clearer and airbrushed like the pictures in most magazines do. Another useful effect that made a big effect on my photos was learning to use the magic wand tool to select part of the picture and change the colours of things such as the eyes that were made brighter so that they stood out from the page more, I also took some of the redness out of the face on the front cover so that the colours looked even. I also learnt how to download different fonts that were more fitting to my music magazine and use them on my pages which helped to make my magazine look more unique instead of having a limited choice on which fonts I could use. For my double-page, a main way I used photoshop to make my magazine fit in with the music genre was by downloading a pattern from a website which I then used and edited it around the page to make splatters in the corner of my page. This effect went with the rock look of my page and gave the page some more colour as I was using a white background which I felt needed something extra to make it look more interesting and appealing to potential readers. A problem I faced while photoshopping was when I realised my chosen front cover photo I had chosen didn’t show the top of my ‘celebrities’ head. This meant I had to colour pick his head and fill in some of the pixels and meant I didn’t have a choice about whether the title of the magazine went infront or behind the head, although this was a problem I didn't expect to happen it helped that this happened as It taught me more skills for photoshop and if i ever had to make something like this again I'd have more knowledge in it. 

Adobe InDesign

Indesign was another program I had no previous knowledge of. This is the program that I used to create my double-page spread, it was a program that I found harder to use than the others but it did create a great result. I first of all created some columns to paste in my already written article, I made the questions a different colour to the answers and had pull out quotes in a bigger sized font in order to make them stand out from the page. After this I created the same neutral coloured background in the picture of the artist the same on the other page and used the feather tool in photoshop to make it less obvious it wasn't already like it. I then pasted in the splats and positioned where I wasn't them. After this I pasted the picture and background into InDesign, this made my double page spread complete. A problem with InDesign was getting the writing in the right places and getting the pull out quotes in the right size so that they stood out from the page but didn't overcrowd the page or make the article too long.  

Blogger

Blogger is the site we used to upload and display all of our course work for this unit. I made my own blog to show the progress of my work in order of when I was doing it and learnt how to upload texts, pictures and other media such as; youtube videos, powerpoints, voice recordings and prezi’s. A problem that I faced when using blogger was that I had to make sure I was keeping my work in order for it to make sense, if not it became very confusing and I was having to take down posts in order to upload ones that went before it so that It was all in chronological order. 

Prezi

Prezi was a program we had to use for question 1 to explain how my magazine was similar to real music magazines, it was a program I wasn’t used to so it took a while to learn how to make paths from each bit of information to the next and inserting pictures from the internet to the prezi. Through using prezi I learnt how to make a more interesting way of displaying information instead of just making a word document and using arrows and highlighting tools to show my thoughts and link ideas. 

Q7.  Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

When I first started the preliminary task I hadn't put together a front cover before and my skills with programs such as; Photoshop were limited. As you can see both pages from my preliminary task looks rushed and the layout doesn't look thought through as much. 'That's Rock!' layout looks alot more like a typical magazine and looks more professional. The pictures in 'That's Rock!' show how I have developed my skills in photoshop and makes the pictures look more airbrushed. Before doing my preliminary task I hadn't looked at other college magazines, all I had to go by was the college prospectus so I didn't have much to get inspiration from. After I did the preliminary task I had to complete many textual analysis's looking at other music magazines and did a questionnaire to find out what my possible target audience would want from a music magazine,  this meant when it came to making my music magazine I was more inspired which made the design more creative and like a music magazine. As we spent more time on each page for our music magazine it meant I had more time to experiment with tools on photoshop and found out about being able to download fonts for my contents page and properly edit my pictures.

Conclusion

In conclusion I do feel i've met the target I set out to achieve which was a rock magazine that wasn't identical to the rock magazines currently offered but would still be recognised as a music magazine. I feel my product was successful as the feedback I got from my focus group was that it did meet what the target audience would expect from a rock magazine and as someone that enjoys rock music I do agree you can tell what kind of genre my magazine is. I feel the colour scheme of my magazine would stand out to who its aimed at as the photo used on the front cover stands out because of the person i've used and the red is a nice contrast to the dark colours. The only aspectsI don't like about the magazine is that I don't think it looks as professional as the music magazines I looked at so if I was to re-do this task again I might choose a different layout for certain parts of my pages.