Preproduction (Presentation of ideas)

Check out my preproduction presentation of ideas: https://www.emaze.com/@AWQRCZTI/untitled

Planning and research (Contents Page Analysis)

Planning and research (Double Page Spread Analysis)

Planning and research (Front Cover Analysis)

Evaluation of Magazine

For my preliminary task I was given the challenge to create a magazine cover page and contents page that fit the criteria of a College/School magazine. At first I thought this would be quite easy to complete however there were some obstacles which made the creation of my magazine quite difficult. However, these obstacles were a good learning process which have prepared me for the making of the main task.

Firstly, I started by looking at many different types of college magazines and annotating the cover and contents page. This helped me to get an idea of what my magazine should look like in order to appeal to the targeted audience of (16-18) year olds. Also, I was able to identify what made each individual and unique, enabling me to develop my own ideas of how I could make my magazine unique too. I was able to observe the colour schemes used, style of text and the way in which both shapes and language were used to entice the reader. This step was quintessential to the success of my magazine as if I had not looked into pre-existing magazines then my magazine could have been completely irrelevant to the task.  

Then, I made a mock up of my magazine by sketching it. This gave me an outline of how I should layout the different sections of my magazine and how it would look when I transferred it over onto Photoshop. Whilst creating this mock up I was able to decide on some colours that I could possibly use. I had already chosen blue and light blue as a theme as I personally felt that this would best suit the style of magazine that I was creating and it is also the Sixth forms colour scheme. On the other hand, I did not want all the decisions about my magazine to come from me as it may only fit my personal taste and not appeal to other people. In order to ensure that the magazine did not only appeal to my tastes I decided on creating a questionnaire which may help to give a consensus of my target audiences preferences. I managed to ask 10 people in total and the results that I collated helped extremely well with decision making of how my magazine would look. Some of the results were different to what I had expected, which if I had not questioned in the questionnaire, would have meant that I may have produced something that was totally different to what the targeted audience would want from a college magazine. This questionnaire was the main inspiration of my magazine and was where I got all of my ideas and guidance from.

Next, I organised a photoshoot for my magazine. In this photoshoot I experienced a few problems. One of the main problems was the lighting. In some pictures it appeared extremely bright and then in others it was extremely dim. I was able to overcome this by turning off the flash on the camera in some images and also by turning of the celling lights in the room. Another problem which I had encountered was that when I was taking pictures  and the person was wearing glasses, there was a lot of glare coming off them which made the photos look very unprofessional. We tried others without the glasses in order to avoid glare however this was something that was unfortunate and something which I had struggled with quite a bit. In the end we managed to take a selection of images where there were minimal amounts of glare or none at all. I was able to fix and tweak these images in Photoshop slightly in order to make the glare less visible and it turned out to not be as large of a problem as which it had first appeared to be. A third problem was the fact that I wanted to remove the background of the images which I had taken however this was made extremely difficult when taken on a plain background as it would always cut out the collar when I went to remove it. This problem was fixed by using a green screen which made the process of removing the background much easier.    

Finally, it was time for me to put together all of my information and research that I had gathered and create my magazine front cover and contents page. To do this I used Photoshop as my choice of software. Firstly, I had place the images which I had photo shopped onto Photoshop. Then I was able to start creating the mast head and cover lines as well as placing the images which I had previously edited. This processes too quite a while because it was putting together everything that I had researched into.

This was the final product alongside an example of a successful college magazine created by another A-level student:

 

(This is my final product)

 

 

(Pre-existing magazine cover)

 

Overall, I am very pleased with my final product as I think that it looks professional and clean. I also think that the editing I did on the main image was good and better than what I had even hoped that it would turn out. This experience has given me a lot to both think about and go away and do differently when I make my final magazine. I think that when I create my next magazine I will possibly try to add a little more colour than what I have done in my college magazine to help it stand out a bit more when put up against another magazine. Also I will try to make the text stand out a lot more as even though the text I used in my magazine looks good when you look at it up close, it doesn’t exactly have a large amount impact when you look at It far away. Furthermore, I will try to perfect my design whilst also planning my ideas better so that I can be certain on exactly what my magazine will look like so that I am not stuck for ideas half way through creation.

Finally, I believe that a good magazine cover and contents should include everything that is needed to be successful in the genre in which it is focused on meaning that if it does not pay attention to detail it could be a complete fail. I think that my magazine caters to all the needs of the targeted audience and it would be successful as a college magazine.