Preliminary Task Evaluation

In this evaluation I will be evaluating the preliminary task. The preliminary assignment was for me to create a college/student magazine front cover and with it a contents page for the magazine. For the evaluation I will be critically analysing the student magazine, mainly focusing on the things that I did well and the other aspects which I can improve on. In addition I will be reviewing the feedback I got from the audience. The feedback from the audience will allow me rethink aspects of my magazine and improve upon it; in turn this will help me will the main task of creating my own music magazine from scratch.

Overall I do think that my student magazine front cover and contents page was successful especially since it was my first attempt on doing one. I the front cover was created on Photoshop while the contents page was done on Indesign.

Using Photoshop to the created the front cover for me was not especially difficult. This is mainly because I do have previous experience with the software, although it was a while since I have been using it. Because of this time lapse, I had to relearn everything so it did probably take me longer to create the front cover than was needed. I did feel as though I had a good enough handle on the basics of the software, this could be shown by the different tools I used in making the front cover. I used rulers in order for all the pictures and words to align, giving the front cover a professional look. I used layers for each image and shortcuts like CTRL-T in order to change the sizes of text Orin addition to this i also used Photoshop to edit the background picture. I used basic text for my front cover and my contents page. The reason i did was because i wanted the magazine to have a professional clean-cut appearance rather than having a masthead that looked like graffiti that would be illegible for people to read.

The camera I used was compact cannon 12mp. The camera was used to capture images that I would later then use for my front cover and contents page. I took many different pictures, each one varying from scenery to camera angles like mid-close up and long shot. Taking a variety of different shots allowed me to have freedom in choosing what I would feel like doing. Eventually I did settle on using an image of the college building. Although I had pictures with people modeling in it, I didn’t feel as if it looked professional enough especially seeing as I was treating this magazine as if it was a first issue. So I thought by putting a picture of the college to rather than a random model, it would act more like a symbol for the introduction to the premises of the magazine. However I do feel as I could have given a lot more thought into what I wanted the magazine to look like seeing as the taking of the pictures were sort of spur of the moment thing, meaning that when it came to designing the front cover and contents page I had to make do and improvise. In total I took roughly 10-14 images I then deleted the images that I didn’t think came out right, I then took the pictures that I thought would configure a theme throughout the front and contents page. For the contents page I used 2 images with the central image being a mid shot of 2 students. I thought this would be appropriate as it is a student magazine and also to create a student oriented theme with the page I created.

The magazines mast head is placed in the top center of the front cover. I stuck with the traditional positioning of the mast head mainly because I wanted that to be the thing that over headed the other things that featured on the front page. The cover lines were was also pretty basic with all of them being on the left hand third. I think I could have been a bit more inventive with the whole magazine in general could have been better as everything was a bit recycled from many magazines. The colour scheme was red and green, which is quite simple. This colour scheme was used as a theme that connected the front cover and the contents page together. My magazine’s front cover also has a big red price mark of 49p on the right hand side.

Despite the fact that I think my magazine was good, I do think there are areas in which I can improve on, such as: the actual presentation of the magazine. This has mostly to do with the fact that it the photography part of the assignment was rushed and therefore left me unprepared with what I wanted to when it came to create the student magazine. Another part of the magazine that could have been vastly improved was the cover lines. This, I think was the biggest flaw of the front cover. It looked too boring and the text on it looked dull, despite me making it red and green in attempt to make it eye-catching. The contents page looked to unprofessional, I think this was because the coloured rectangular blocks perhaps made it look a little cheesy and amateurish. Although it was not really an important aspect of the assignment I think the content listed on the contents page could have more detail or to the very least have a list of a variety of articles.

Write three key points for development when producing the main task (music magazine)

 

·         One of the main things I learnt from making this was the importance of time management seeing as most of the issues I had with the student magazine was because a lot of it was rushed. For the music magazine task I will be making sure that I actually stay on schedule

·         My skills and understanding of Photoshop and in particular Indesign, needs to be improved in order for my music magazine to look as professional as possible

·         Lastly I’d like to dedicate more time to exploring different ideas/magazine structures and perhaps research more into my chosen genre (indie, acoustic rock) by looking into magazines that are of similar genre