Evaluation Notes

Evaluation Draft

v  Draft all 7 questions in word and answers.

v  You have to demonstrate excellent use of IT software. You have to use a range of different technologies to answer each of the questions. These include: Prezi/slideshare, podcasts, infogram, Flickr, bounceapp,mindmeister , vlogs, scribd etc. (use a minimum of 4)

v  You have to use technologies that are appropriate and fit for purpose of the question. (explain why you’re using that technology)

1)      In what way does your media product (music magazine-R&B) use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products (real magazines)? Your genre. Identify the codes and conventions of that genre (COLOURS, PICTURE ON THE FRONT, FONT, AMOUNT OF WRITING ON FRONT, FORMAL LANGUAGE, HOUSESTYLE, LAYOUT, ANCHORAGE and TERMINOLOGY). Refer to case studies. Also take print screens of parts of the case study magazine and your magazine.

2)      How does your media product represent particular social groups? (do a vlog) Sub-culture-audience: colour, mise-en-scene (clothing, lighting, use of models) is the person the right age and gender to represent that social group? Are their clothes suitable? Say what the social group is. Refer to press pack.

3)      What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?  Reflect on distribution taste, newsstand taste, magazine pitch. Explain why you have chosen this magazine- statistics, figures, e-zines.

4)      Who would be the audience for your media product? Refer to the press pack/media kits. Also refer to my pitch. Give a full demographic socio-economic profile.

5)      How did you attract/address your audience? Techniques (new media technologies, /cross media convergent, apps, QR code-takes your straight to buy tickets to concerts etc.) models, colour scheme, fonts, use of language/register. Review audience feedback you have received (say feedback has confirmed…)

6)      What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product? What and why have you used? (Photoshop, in-design, blogger, photography studio, illustrator, technologies in evaluation, magazine pitch) Photoshop-image manipulation purposes, spot healing tool, brightness and contrast, resized images, manipulate text and colour, industry standard. In-design-its professional for page layout, alignment, grids, rulers. Blogger-part of a new media technology, to show your journey and it’s an appropriate online platform for audience feedback. It’s interactive. Photography studio- to process professional pictures so they are of good quality.

7)      Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Show what you have learnt in both a practical, technical, aesthetical (correct range of fonts, images, etc.) and theoretical level. Use terminology (semiotic analysis). 

Final Piece- Mainstream Magazine

09/12/2014

I have finished my front cover and contents page today. Tomorrow i need to do my DPS. 

Magazine Cover- INCOMPLETE

This is what i have achieved today. I mostly focused on my cover line and colour. Next lesson i will be focusing on teasers.

24/11/14

This is what i have achieved this lesson, I have made my masthead and edited my photo. Next lesson i am going to add teasers and my coverline.

Feedback For Presentation

 From the Teachers: I was told that I presented well. I discussed my chosen genre well with a brief audience profile. This could be more detailed generally. As discussed elements of the pitch were missing which I need to complete. Masthead design, house styles. The general design elements of my magazine. Finally, I discussed colour, and content appropriately.

Class Feedback:  I didn't receive any class feedback , but personally i could have explained my magazine in more detail and have a couple magazines to compare them to mine. I also could have gathered more information about other magazines which have been published and gathered more examples of magazine covers which have influenced mine. 

Illustrator Tutorial

Notes On Adobe Illustrator: 

• Illustrator is vector-based, not pixels. It is better for graphics as it is more flexible and does not distort the image
• Use layers, just like photoshop. Lock it when you're not using it. 
• Selection- Direct selection tools are key
• Fill- To fill an object
• Stroke- To add an outline
• Opacity- Makes the object solid/see-through
• Selection tool allows you to e.g. rotate (like free transformation on photoshop) 
• Direct selection creates anchor points and anchors
• Shapes tool so useful
• Effects- e.g. blur, 3D etc
• You can import JPEGs and convert it to vector using Live trace - Stylised look
• Text tool- Use selection tool to move, resize , rotate etc.
• Window- type - character- experiment. Manipulate e.g. tracking (spacing)
• Right click text- create outlines. This creates anchor points which allows you to isolate and edit smaller parts of the text
• Pen tool allows you to add /alter anchor points
• To export: File-export-PNG file- select high resolution. Make the colour transparent
• Switch colour pallette to RGB(red, green, blue) to match colours to photoshop

Studio Notes

Backdrop:

-white backdrop, will allow your back ground to look either creme or infinate white 

-model must stand 5-6 feet away from the back of the backdrop so they avoid bleaching in with the background

 Lighting:

-main lights must be off while photographing, only have the flash lights on

-3point lighting for portrait pictures

-there are 3 types of lights (main,hair&fill)

-i would suggest using a 3:1 lighting ratio as this helps add contrast and creates a nice effect

Back of the light:

These are buttons you may need to use..

-on&off

-test(make sure everything works)

-music note buttons which beeps to inform us that the light is ready to be used again

-fox light setting(how bright you want the light to be, ranging from one being the lowest and six being the highest)

-godox is the transmitter

Camera:

-DSLR camera(nikon)

-the camera has 2 memory card slots

-to add an effect to the picture, for example black and white, you go to the menu and click ok and click monochrome

-always click play back to view the images you have captured

-use the aperture and shutter settings. Aperture is for focus and shutter is for movement. 

-reflectors- gold gives a warm tone and silver gives a cool tone

pitch feedback

College Magazine Evaluation

What went well:
Two of my peers commented on my magazine cover and both mentioned that my style is very simple but eye catching. This shows that i have a clear understanding of how a college magazine should look. I also received a comment about my masthead, one of the comments included the word 'interesting' as it was placed behind the model rther than infront. I used a consistent 'house style' which allowed my cover to look sophisticated and not too cluttered as my teasers were mainly on one side but i revieved a comment which mentioned that i should make my cover line bigger so the reader can identify what the main story is from the teasers. 

What i need to improve on:

I need to organise my font sizes and how i edit pictures. I also need to work on emphasising the coverline to make it clear to the audience of what it is. 

Three key points:

-explore photoshop more

-edit pictures properly

-use more interesting and appealing colour themes

Pitch

college magazine contents page

My College Magazine Cover

Vibe and XXL Media Kits

Vibe Lifestyle network represents over 25 sites and reaches over 19 million unique users per month. The new Vibe is the premier destination for urban music, entertainment, culture and lifestyle for the aspirational 18-34 year old. 
VIBE chronicles the celebrities, sounds, fashion, lifestyle, new media, and business born from urban music. As an authoritative voice, VIBE creates trends as much as it records them. It covers music, educates its readers, and gives back to the community. VIBE serves as a portal to a growing young, trendsetting, multicultural audience. 
As excellent journalists and innovative marketers, VIBE is the voice of urban music and culture. VIBE provides a democratic digital experience where users are encouraged to provide content.

In this image, we can see that the percentage of men who buy this magazine is 2% higher than the percentage of women due to the images which are consined withinthe magazine.  The sex appeal draws men in more than women. This is vibe's aim to get more readers. It also informs us of what ages group is most likely to purchase this magazine. 

This shows us what each issue is going to be about per season. For example, in the summer, they are producing an issue called ' the sexy issue' which covers summer music's lineup and hot celebrities. This editorial calendar also shows us when the on sale date is and when the material and final ad close is. 

XXL MEDIA KIT

This shows us who reads this magazine an from this we can see that a large percentage of men read it, due to the explicit content which usually attracts men to buy it. 

 

This is a more detailed piece of information which tells us who reads this magazine. There is a significant difference between the amount of men and women who purchase XXL. This part of the press pack also points out what ethnicity is more prone to buyig this magazine and what age group is too. Mainly african-american males of age 21+ are most likely to be a reader of this magazine. 

This chart shows rival magazines and how many more people purchase XXL than rolling stone and spin. This is a good thing to have in a press pack as it may influence people to read it as its the most read magazine and celebrities may want XXL to promote them as it gains more readers than the other two magazines. 

Finally, this is XXL's  publishing schedule. It allow us to see what issue was published when and what each issue may contain.  This is helpful to people who want to find previous magazines which are not in stores anymore. 

Preliminary Task: Planning

This an outline of what my desired college magazine may looklike. 

Photoshop Workshop

This is my attempt of creating a magazine cover on photoshop.

Step one: open adobe master collection the click photoshop

Step two:go to file and select new

Step three:to make your page A4 go to preset,select international paper and click ok

Step four:you need a ruler so click set ruler,view then select the ruler

Step five:when setting the ruler vertically, click the ruler on the left hand side, select it and drag it across and make it a 1cm width. Repeat this all the way around the page

Step six: to upload a picture, select file, click open, then select your image. Just above the rulers, another tab will open , drag the tab and release onto the blank page. You have to unlock the picture to allow you to move it around. In order to do this, click the lock icon in the layers tab where you view your image(right hand side). Finally click the arrow and you can move your image. 

Step seven: to insert text, click the 'T' tool. 

DPS - my journalistic work

College Cover&Contents Analysis

This is the contents page of a college magazine. We can see that there are 6 main sections that may apply to almost every student that reads this. The sub headers of each section are the same colour as the girl's dress who features on the front cover and in the image in the contents page. So as we can see, there is a particular colour scheme throughout. The colour scheme which is used for te front cover still remains the same for the contents page. It contains formal language the same fonts as on the front cover. The way that the contents is set out is neat and not all over the place. The layout is pretty simple. The model on the front cover appears on the contents page, so this lets us know that there is a story linked to her within the magazine.  

- The masthead is at the top of the magazine in bold red font reading 'COLLEGE' 

- The main colour scheme of this is red and black

- The main cover line is 'NYC's freshman fashion ceo' but its hard to identify this as it is not symbollically bigger than the other texts on the magazine 

- The main image is in the centre of the page, the model is of a student who is smiling which shows an enthusiastic and positive attitude towards the college

- The barcode is in the bottom left hand side of the magazine and on the side of the barcode it says '100%' free which may encourage students to pick up a magazine

- In the right corner just under the masthead, the date and issue is visible

- There are only 3 types of fonts being used

production schedule

Evaluation

Evaluation

Research- Research was the main body of this task as it allowed me to gain a clear understanding of how i should design my magazine. As i researched into more depth , i gathered a clear idea of the layout and what colour schemes would look sophisticated. I struggled with finding extra information to include in the magazine. I really struggled with finding quotes from celebrities displaying their views on music piracy.

Journalistic&Writing Skills- Due to me taking English combined as an A-level, I found this section quite simple to do. During this task, my strength was writing the journalistic piece whereas I found it hard to structure the piece as I wanted it to sound sophisticated.

The Indesign Skills-Indesign was quite a challenging piece of software to control but I soon got my head around it. It was pretty simple inserting images and text boxes but when it came to filling the backgrounds and changing the colours, I was unable to, so i stuck to dark and light grey tones but this had a perk as it made my DPS look rather sophisticated.

Web Publishing Skills- I had no luck in this area of work as I have no idea how to work blogger so I haven't uploaded a great deal of work to the site yet. I am finding blogger very challenging as I have never used a site like or similar to this and have had no guidance with it.

4 Targets I Have Set Myself:

• Do extra research before hand so it's easier in the long run to piece together my work and analysis
• Use Indesign regularly so I can get the jist of how to control it so I wont struggle in future and I wont waste time trying to find what buttons to press
• Use blogger more regular so I am able to blog more work and recieve extra feedback
• To research extra sources to back up my claims and make my reasons for why i have written what i have stronger