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Foundation Portfolio- The Evaluation- Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

In Conclusion, when I started this magazine project, I had limited knowledge of how high quality images and text were used in magazines that are published today. Although I had done leaflets, flyers, and other publications before while I was in secondary school, I only had access to less technical programs such as Publisher and earlier versions of PowerPoint that in my opinion didn’t have enough freedom to design publications in the way I envisioned them. Although my knowledge of magazine design is limited due to the reasons I have mentioned before, I have been working hard to improve the design of my music magazine ever since I started to learn about layouts, puffs, creating barcodes and other basic information during the time I was analysing student magazines in November. In my student magazine, I had only targeted one audience while in my music magazine; I used more than then one target audience which were rock fans in general, young and old. For example while the front cover of my student magazine used a simple image of three students standing against a wall and used bright simple colours, the front cover of my music magazine uses much darker colours such as black and yellow, the main image has been edited and recolored with Photoshop and as I have mentioned before, the mastheads are written in a ying-yang style with one masthead being written backwards on a black background with yellow text and vice versa. So, to conclude, I believe that I have learnt how to make a good impression on my designs and hopefully in the future, I will understand how to make magazines of a higher quality.

Foundation Portfolio- The Evaluation- Question 6. What have I learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout the process of designing our magazines, I have been taught how to use a wide variety of new programs such as Blogger, InDesign, Photoshop, and Survey Monkey. I’ve learnt how to open my own account and how to set up a blog to be used as a coursework post on Blogger and over the weeks I have been posting updates relating to my work every week. I’ve also learnt that unlike a Word document, blogs are not usually written with a large numbers of words that is usually about 250 or less. As for InDesign and Photoshop, I have learnt how to edit photographs taken from a digital camera for use as the main images on the front cover and contents page of the magazine. Although I have had difficulty working with these programs and learning how they work, particularly InDesign because I haven’t really been familiar with these complicated programs. Additionally I’ve been used to working with Microsoft programs for so long that I find it hard to adapt to new technologies, but I am beginning to understand how they work and hopefully I’ll have an easier time working with them in future projects. I came up against problem when learning about the new technologies, for example, when I was using Survey Monkey to write up and post a questionnaire, I didn’t receive any results and I had to go back to Microsoft Word to rewrite the questionnaire, print off a number of copies and hand them out to other students to fill out. Another problem I had was that due to the fact that my family mostly uses mobile phones to take photos and that I needed photos taken from a digital camera as their images had higher quality, it was hard to find images around the college, which were related to our subject matter. It was fortunate that the annual college production was being preformed at the Assembly Rooms and we were allowed to take photos of some of the sets to be used as images.

Foundation Portfolio- The Evaluation- Question 5. How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract the reader’s attention, I have mentioned on the front cover that this magazine will include features that are focused on Ringo Starr, despite being from the sixties, he’s an historical interest as the article is written by a student within the targeted age group which talks about his influence. However in my earlier plans for the content, I initially was only going to focus my magazine on newer bands aimed at a younger target audience such as Metallica or Iron Maiden, but it was later decided that due to a lack of media resources and popular demand, the magazine would also contain features focused on legends such as Tommy Lee, Steve Tyler and others. Despite this, my magazine still also features the latest album releases, which will be included to attract audiences who like to remain up to date with this music industry.

Foundation Portfolio- The Evaluation- Question 4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience that I am hoping to attract will most likely be young adults aged between the 18-25 age group. The male gender will also be given the focus here because although female audience members will be able to read this without problems, they probably wouldn’t find anything specifically geared towards them. On this particular issue however, I think that an older audience would purchase the product due to the Ringo Starr article mentioned earlier.

Foundation Portfolio-The Evaluation - Question 3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Institutions like Time, Life and Image Publishing cover a wide range of different brands, which would make it extremely difficult for a magazine like mine to get green lighted and I don’t think that a large media company would buy my magazine mainly because of the lack of copyright- approved images and the fact that the programs that we have been using do not have the right software to create high-tech images seen in today’s magazines such as Empire, Time, etc. However, a company that only specialises in music magazines such as The Bauer Music Group would be ideal to distribute my product because the company publishes other magazines that appeal to the same target audience and they are similar to my design such as Kerrang! Whose stylish front covers are comparable to my cover design and Q’s informative writing style influenced the information I wrote in my double page article. In conclusion the magazine that I am trying to create will use Kerrang’s presentation with images and Q’s informative writing style, so the Bauer Music Group would be a desirable distributer.

Foundation Portfolio- The Evaluation- Question 2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Throughout my front cover and contents page, I used several words that relate towards a modern audience such as on my Front Cover where the puff is written in a rock fan style which I wrote as an attempt to grab attention for my target audience. Expect for maybe my double page article on Ringo Starr, which is done in a more analytical style than the others because an earlier version was going to be written in the 3rd person about his life. However, when I couldn’t get any copyrighted images relating to him, I had to edit the article to a 1st person narrative by using an image of a college student and then claiming that the article was written by him, that he was a young rock star, and that this article was a tribute to Ringo Starr and his inspiration on his own career. That particular article is aimed mostly at the older generation between the ages of 35-50 because they are most familiar with time period that the Beatles preformed in The front cover’s design consists of a black and white image of a drum kit with a digitally altered blue colour added in to create a retro-style effect. I made these decisions because of my limited resources, but hopefully I can do better in the future. So in conclusion my magazine tries to be represented for a younger crowd in the front cover, but as I am more of an analytical person, the style gradually changes into a more informative approach in my article. So in conclusion, I have represented all the groups of rock fans, old and young in a stereotypical way because of the use of colour, images and information.

Foundation Portfolio- The Evaluation- Question 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When in the process of designing a music magazine, there are many key ingredients, i.e. conventions that you have to take into consideration. These include mastheads which are the main logos for magazines, advertisement puffs which are used to either promote a side story featured in the magazine or a product which is sponsored by the magazines shareholders, pictures and captions to go on the front page which also must include a central image to go on the front cover to match to the story of the front cover and so on. I tried to follow these rules as best as I could when I was designing my own music magazine and despite not being really familiar with the InDesign program, I have tried to make my design unique by having the creative idea of using two mastheads with one being written in backward text on a black background with the text coloured yellow and the other one being written in forward black text on a yellow background which gives the masthead a sort of a ying-yang approach. Beside from that the design of my magazine cover is still heavy influenced from other music magazines such as Kerrang! or NME which is mainly because of myself having a lack of experience with the programs used to create magazines such as InDesign and Photoshop. As for the design of my contents page, I have used four separate images positioned on the right side of the page which were all my own due to copyright issues, and the contents themselves, like one of the mastheads have been written in yellow text on a black background.

Foundation Portfolio: Double Page Spread

Foundation Portfolio: Final Front Cover

I have just managed to finish off details on the final design of the Front Cover page. I've been struggling with the graphics, but I think that the end result looks really professional.

Foundation Portfolio: Final Contents Page

Today I finished my contents page. After seven weeks, this project is finally reaching its end. Overall, I feel that I have a good start on using Indesign and I felt that I have done the best work on the contents page. I am particularly pleased with the amount of detail given to the listed items.

Research & Planning- Questionnaire results