Evaluation of preliminary task

Evaluation of preliminary task

When doing research of other magazine covers and contents pages, it helped me develop my ideas, and thoughts on what type of design I wanted my magazine to have. It helped me have some knowledge on what typical college magazines look like, for example how formal they look, or the type of content they have. By looking at differently designed magazines, it gave me an idea of what to include in my magazines, e.g. what type of images, stories, and the type of style of my magazine.

My magazine uses the same conventions as a real media magazines, because of the type of software, and the style of my magazine. I made my magazine cover, and contents page using Adobe Photoshop, many professional journalists, and magazine designers use this type of software, as its easy to manipulate an image, and get the results you want. The way I produced my photos for my contents page, and cover page was also using the same sort of conventions, as I used professional, high quality cameras, to get the image I wanted. 

The type of institution that would produce my magazine, is a company that produces educational magazines, and other types of media. My magazine is a college magazine, therefore it includes things aimed at students, and information aimed at the parents. My magazine also includes different types of articles, that have educational purposes, this is why overall it would be best if a educational type of media industry, would produce my magazine as It would be the same genre.

I attracted my audience, by specifically aiming my magazine at them, when analysing magazines and seeing there key features such as: big main images, bright colour schemes, and interesting cover lines. I also conducted a survey to see what my target audience would prefer, I wanted to see the type of colour scheme they liked, the type of images they wanted, also the type of articles they wanted to be included. While looking through my research I realised that my target audience, prefers the main image aimed at them specifically meaning a image of someone in the same situation e.g. a student. I also realised they would prefer bright colours, and interesting fun articles.

Over the course of doing this task I have developed on my Photoshop skills, taking photos and using new equipment, such as new cameras, lenses etc. I have learnt how to produce a final piece that fits the criteria, however could use a lot of improvement, which I will learn how to over the period of the course.

The strengths of my final product are, the fact I adapted my final piece to my target audience, I made sure I analysed what my target audience wanted for example colour schemes, and the type of articles featured. I made sure my magazine included what they wanted, and adapted to some of the features professional magazines had, like the style and images taken.

The weaknesses of my final product are, the quality of my cover page and contents page, I need to develop more on my Photoshop skills to produce higher quality products, I can do this by using more tools and learning how to use different effects. Another thing I could improve on is, the quality of the images I took, I need to learn how to improve my photography skills so I can take good images, I need to learn how to use the equipment and to develop on my skills.