Feedback on Final Magazine

Susana - 16 years old: 
"There is a strong colour scheme throughout the magazine which makes it look more professional. The front page has good use of bold, eye catching sell lines which makes it appealing to an audience. The contents page is laid out in an easy to read format with the most popular stories on a larger scale to make it easier for readers to find the pages they are looking for. The use of interesting pictures on all pages of the double page spreads makes the target audience more willing to continue reading the article along with the bold pull quotes. Overall, a very professional, well-made magazine." 

Filipa: 14 years old: 
"I like your colour scheme, it is very bold and stands out. Also the use of different bands photos on the contents page are primary photos which is good as it clearly shows you have put effort into taking the photos as you can clearly see who the bands are. Finally the small photos on the double page spreads are laid out nicely and look really effective."

After receiving this feedback I believed that I had met the needs and expectations of my target audience as they found my magazine easy to navigate and found the use of photos and pull quotes interesting. 

Comparison of Draft Magazine to Final Magazine

I have compared my Draft Magazine to my Final Magazine as I have completely changed my whole magazine. This is because when I first started my magazine I had a vague idea of how I wanted my magazine to look like. However I then started to look at other magazine and began to get more inspiration which then led to me starting my magazine again to make my magazine meet all the conventions a successful magazine has. 

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

Transcript: 

The two main forms of technology that I used when creating my magazine was Adobe Photoshop and Indesign. Both Adobe Photoshop and Indesign are a software which allows me to create professional and realistic products with good quality outcomes opposed to using a software such as Paint. Adobe Photoshop is the best software to edit photos and remove the white back drop as it leaves a good quality photo that can be then used on other backgrounds. However I didn’t create my magazine using Photoshop as I did for GCSE. Instead I used a more advanced and professional software; Indesign.

Photoshop is the best software in order to remove the white back drop from the images as when I had finished cutting the background I was then able to edit my photos by either changing the colour levels or adding an effect to them. When adding an effect to a photo that has been taken outdoors makes the photo appear more professional as when taking the photo I used a canon 5500 1.8f 50mm lens which blurs the background and focuses on the model. To remove the white back drop off an image I clicked on Select and a drop down menu appeared, I then selected Colour Range and a new box appeared on screen. I used the ‘Add to sample’ picker to pick out the white background and when I was happy with my sample I clicked OK. I then right clicked and selected ‘Select Inverse’, all this means is that the dotted lines are now around my image and not around the background. I then edited my photo in ‘Quick Mask Mode’; I did this by filling my image with the paint brush tool in black. When I had finished this I right clicked and clicked ‘layer via copy’ and I had no white background on my image. I was then able to put my photo on a different coloured background.

I created my magazine using Indesign, this is the software that is used to make actual magazine. By using Indesign it enabled me to use tools and features that would allow me to produce a successful magazine. Compared to Photoshop the text wrap on Indesign is a lot better and easier to use, by using text wrap it allows you to have text going around an image and it fills in all the spaces available leaving you with no uneven white gaps. Another good feature used in Indesign is the ability to be able to make the edges around the photos round; I have used this in my double page spread where I have created a montage of different photos. Another good feature of using InDesign is the double pages, this allowed be to create an A3 contents page and spreads. By having these in A3 also allowed me to write a fair amount of text. I was also able to download a font off the internet and insert it onto InDesign to use for my masthead and sell lines. I found this quite useful as I was then able to make my magazine stand out instead of just having a plain boring font such as ‘Times New Roman’.

During this course I have been documenting all my work onto a blog; this is an easy and useful way for me to upload all my work. I used many different formats when creating my work, such as Microsoft word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Prezi, images and videos. When creating work on Microsoft word and PowerPoint I had to use Scribd, this is a very useful website where I was able to convert and publish my work as this allowed me to embed my work onto blogger. Another software that I used when planning my magazine was Prezi, this allowed me to create small presentations similar to PowerPoint but with more interaction as there are many paths with zooms, these paths enable you to navigate though each part of the presentation. I also used a software called Cam-studio, this enabled me to make a video of the progression of my work. For example when creating my preliminary task. Cam-studio allows you to record what’s happening on the screen; this could be by showing how you created a product or how you removed the background of an image.

The camera that I used when doing my photo shoot was a canon 5500 this is a professional camera that takes good quality images, this is because you can change the camera lens to suit the type of location such as when taking photos outside you can change the camera lens to 1.8f 50mm lens. As the camera is digital I was able to look through the photos when taking the pictures and delete the photos that I didn’t need as opposed to not using a digital camera as you would be waiting till the photo was printed, also you wouldn’t have been able to see if the photo was at a good quality. When I had finished my photo shoot it was easy to transfer the photos onto the computer. I did three photo shoots; they were based in the studio and in a location outside. In the studio I had a white back drop with professional lighting that would flash when I had taken a photo. By taking the photos in the studio with these lights enabled me to have a more professional quality image. 

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

Question 7 

Transcript: 

Looking back at my preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt a lot about the production and distribution of magazines. This is also shown by the lack of tools used in the preliminary task compared to the final magazine. When creating my preliminary task, I used adobe Photoshop whereas for my music magazine I used InDesign. Considering I had never used InDesign before, I feel that my confidence with using a new programme and experimenting with new tools has grown.

In my preliminary task I didn't I lacked in the conventions of a typical magazine, which lead into having a very basic magazine. Throughout the research and planning of my music magazine I have learnt to understand the conventions of a successful magazine. The amount of time spent on my preliminary task compared to my music magazine can be clearly seen. This is because when creating my preliminary task I had less time and I had no time to plan what I was going to do. Whereas with my final product, I completed numerous tasks and done research before doing my photo shoot. Also in my photo shoot I used a professional camera and key studio lighting whereas in my preliminary task I took photos in random places around school.

I have learnt a lot since my preliminary task, for example I've improved in my Photoshop skills by adding different effects to the images that I took and changing the lighting of the image, this made the photos that I took appear more professional. I used a video online to help me remove the white background from my images as I had forgotten how to do this. Due to all the new skills that I have learnt you can clearly see that my music magazine looks a lot more professional compared to my preliminary task, this is because I have made sure that I've included all the conventions needed. Also this is because I used a professional camera which gave me good quality images that I could use in my magazine, more over I used the white back drop and key studio lighting which gave the high quality images. Also I had time to plan the types of poses/positions I wanted my model to be in. Whereas in my preliminary task I had poor lighting with no poses, it was all just natural photos.

When creating my preliminary task I didn't have much inspiration as it was a school magazine whereas for my final task I had a lot of inspiration as the music industry is growing with popular magazines. I researched many magazines so that I could understand the conventions of the magazine. I also researched a lot about the contents page, as I was unsure what the structure was. For example the categories, band and artist index and editors note.

I think that creating my music magazine on InDesign gives a more professional standard look appose to having creating it on Photoshop like I did for my preliminary task.

Production Log: Monday 4th March

In today's lesson I converted my magazine into a PDF print format however I came across a problem where I couldn't convert my magazine due to a font that I had downloaded off the internet having a licensing restriction. It took me quite a while to work out how to fix this problem. I then had to change all the fonts that I had downloaded to an outline which then allowed me to convert my magazine to a PDF print. I then uploaded my magazine to a website called Issuu which allows the readers to turn the pages of the magazine.

Final Magazine

Production Log: Friday 1st March

In today's lesson I finished my magazine and asked my classmates to give me feedback on my magazine. I got a lot of goof feedback for my magazine and made a few improvements where I thought was necessary. As I have finished my magazine I've got a week till my deadline to convert all my evaluation questions into something other than word. I will be working on question 7 tonight and making my way up to question 1. And by this time next week I will have finished my media studies coursework.