Evaluation: Question 7

Question7:

I feel I have learnt from looking back at my preliminary task in the progression from it to the full product that to make a magazine is very hard work and includes a lot of steps and I only did a front cover, contents page and a double spread.

Front cover

I think my front cover was the hardest task to make out of all three things to complete for the magazine. The front cover is what attracts your audience so you have to try making it the best but still continue the hard work throughout the magazine. I used InDesign to help me create the front cover I think I was very stressful having to be able to learn new tools. The easiest part was finding a model and taking pictures, before I went into the studio I created a call sheet and I looked on the internet for poses that could be used/ developed to help with my magazine. I took many pictures the hard bit was picking out the appropriate picture to attract my target audience.  The part of the front cover that took me the longest to do was the Masthead. I had to research if anyone had the name which was tiring. Then, I had to pick an appropriate style of lettering and last but not least the colours. I started with the Masthead first because that was the hardest and I think that made the biggest impact on my magazine. I changed the way my magazine looked many times before I handed in the finally outcome. I also had a problem with the Masthead and the main image, I didn’t know if I should put the image behind or in front the Masthead, but in the end it looked better with the image behind. Another point to add is the font used. I decided to make my red the same colour/shade as the model’s lipstick that was really hard and took allot of timing.

Contents page

My contents page was a struggle from beginning to end. I finished my contents page last due to the amount of times I had to delete and add things, there was something about my contents page that I just didn’t like and I felt that it didn’t really blend in as well with the front cover and double page spread. Also I didn’t have any location pictures so I have to try and add that on before the hand in date but I didn’t know what it should be, eventually I came up with the idea of more female upcoming artist and fashion winter eye (as advertised on the front cover). I think the layout of where everything should go without looking unprofessional was my weakness. Also, I had to use a different programme to create this which was InDesign. I didn’t want to use it because I have spent weeks on Photoshop and just got used to it and the techniques were completely different. The photograph of my upcoming model on the left of the page had a little problem, I used a white backdrop and in the white backdrop had creases. Therefore, and I had to place the photo in Photoshop then, crop it out and place it onto the page. I used my school magazine to help me with the layout and out the contents page of XXL which was very useful; I used two pages to make this contents page successful because one page just looked really squashed and unattractive.

Double page spread

I really enjoyed making my double page spread. I didn’t mind the writing and I had a great idea for the layout from the start which is unique because normally one side of the page would have one picture of the upcoming artist and the other side with the context would only have a little picture at the top or in the centre of the page. But, I wanted my magazine to be different so I surrounded the page with the artist doing different poses. I also created this page using InDesign I didn’t struggle at all I just used word to type up my content so I would be aware of any punctuation or spelling mistakes and had to copy and paste it into the columns.

Overall, I think the outcome of my magazine was successful if I had a chance to improve something it would be the contents page again because am still not fully pleased with it.

The audience was adults males and females, 55% of males like it and 45% females it. This is a 10% difference. The different isn’t as big compared to other magazine media kits. In my magazine, I aimed at males and females which helped me to have a wide target audience. In the different age ranges 21+ was the most popular with 82% therefore I thought this would be a good reason to make my audience a little bit younger starting from 16+ which would make my magazine more popular in the media. Being employed was more popular than being in college that’s why I aimed mine at the working class because they would be able to afford my magazine monthly. Black/African American was 75% but the other ethnicities failed to even make it passed 16%. Therefore I made my model for my front cover have the same ethnicity because that was the main attraction.