Q7.
Overall I think
I have improved greatly via the quality of my final magazine as well in terms
of photography and journalism. Also, I believe I learnt new ways to improve the
professionalism of my magazine by developing skills through the process, and
learning from mistakes and things I didn’t like on my college magazine front
cover and contents.
F Front Cover
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With my preliminary task, I had a large issue
with spacing, layout and colouring. The colour scheme I had chosen did not fit
well with the styling of the cover artist, which led to it blending into the
hair, and her clothing. This was one issue I was keen to avoid, and was one of
my 3 points of improvement I highlight in my college mag evaluation. From this
I focused on improving the cover-lines and trying to find ways to make it stand
out and not blend into the cover artist or the background – This time when
doing the cover-lines I added black boxes behind the main cover-lines to ensure
it stood out and caught the audience’s eye. I also added a drop shadow behind
the rest of the writing to make it stand out and prevent it from blending in –
although I somewhat had a similar issue with it not standing out I think I
definitely improved this time and learnt how to deal with this issue due to it
occurring on my preliminary task. + More thought was put into the contents of
the cover –line s- journalism improved and was shorter as that is conventional
+ draws in readers
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Another issue that occurred with my front cover
on my preliminary task was the structuring and layout of the cover-lines. On my
college magazine they were very messy, and placed anywhere that they would fit
– they were not aligned at all. When making my real magazine I attempted to
align all of the cover-lines to avoid the front cover looking very messy – all
but one of my cover-lines were aligned as during the process of creating the
final magazine I discovered that Photoshop has green lines that help you to
align cover-lines from both sides – this gave my final magazine a much more
structured and professional look then my college magazine
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I chose to use a colour scheme which stood out
more e.g. gold rather than a darker blue to catch the eye of the audience +
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Another thing I improved on was the placement of
the typical conventions of a magazine such as the barcode, the strapline,
website and edition name. With the college magazine I place the website,
edition name and number and price where it seemed to fit and it wasn’t in the
typical places – making my preliminary magazine unconventional and messy in
this aspect. With the real magazine I organised in a way that was conventional
– I placed the issue number and price with the barcode, and put the magazine
website under the masthead so only the strapline was on top. I also took out
the puff as I found that was unconventional of a hip hop magazine + when making
the college magazine I had difficulty finding somewhere to place it so it ended
up being awkwardly placed in the middle; I did not want this issue again with
the front cover
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In regards to photography + mise-en-scene, the
quality of the photos used has improved greatly. For my college magazine I used
an IPhone 6 camera and any available white background to take my front cover
image – however when taking my real magazine photos I used a professional
photography studio and a proper DLSR Camera – this because over the course I
acquired the skills of how to use these, to give my real magazine photographs a
more professional. I also took a wider range of photographs when making my real
magazine whereas with my college magazine the pictures use were taken in one
shot
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With the mise-en-scene, I put more thought into
the photo for the real one. With my college magazine image the picture was very
dull and basic and there was no aspects of a USP – I hadn’t thought about the
styling and clothing props of my model and just gave a folder to connote the
school genre. Her expression was very typical – a smile, her clothing hadn’t
been styled to fit the genre and there wasn’t anything that stood out. With the
real magazine I took measures to ensure that the mise-en-scene was properly
styled and more eye-catching. I chose conventions more appropriate for the
genre and had a wider variety of pose. Unlike with the college mag, I made sure
my front cover star wasn’t smiling as that’s more traditional of the genre and
that she was head-on so that we could clearly get the direct mode –of-address.
Her pose and styling again, was styled to represent the genre. She wore chains,
hoops, watches etc to connote the hip hop genre – more thought was put into
connoting the genre – her make –up styling also – more darker and fierce to
connote her personality more – in college mag personality wasn’t considered –
background plain, no other things can be seen in it unlike with the college mag
where you can see plugs and other colour so the background – ensured
professionalism in this mag as I only noticed the other things in the college
mag after
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I think I managed to achieve the goals I had set
myself in the evaluation to a good extent – not fully but I definitely improved
from the college mag
Contents Page
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Firstly, my real magazine contents page was
double paged as I felt that it would give me more space to add images and headers
as I did not add this in my college magazine and that was one of the 3 points I
wanted to improve on
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With my college magazine I didn’t include any
headers to indicate what the articles were e.g. were they features or regulars
and because of this they weren’t very organised other than the numbering – with
my music magazine I put sections for features and regulars and put articles
that fit underneath them, this made the contents more professional and
organised in this aspect – made sure the writing was aligned as in the college
mag one of the contents explanations ran over and intertwined with another
sentence and it was hard to tell where the sentence stopped/started.
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When making my college magazine, the titles of
the articles weren’t emphasised a lot, they were only made in a bigger text –
for my actual magazine I changed the colour to emphasis it more
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With the pictures, I again used an IPhone 6
camera for the college one whereas in the real one I used a professional
camera. I also focused more on the location of the pictures this time – with
the college magazine the images were all inside a school and all the models had
similar expressions and poses so it wasn’t inventive however with the real
magazine one I chose a wide range of locations to take the pictures on so it
looked better and more professional as well as had the models pose in different
ways to represent the artist they were playing as that is how it would be in a
real magazine – also with the page numbers on the pictures I added a box behind
them and made it slightly transparent to make the page numbers clearer as I
found with the college magazine the page numbers slightly blended in with the
backgrounds of the pictures. Adding on, I made sure the styling of my models
fit the genre and focused on what they were wearing whereas with the college
mag I didn’t.
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Regarding
the conventions of a contents, organised the conventional items such as the
website, page numbers and issue date properly. I made the website name and page
number smaller as that is more conventional, and looks more professional –
looking at the college mag, having the website that big didn’t look
professional - added pull quotes and editor’s letter to make it look more
professional and add on to conventions of a contents page as my college one was
quite basic in this aspect and didn’t add these conventions
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Spacing wise, it was still quite cramped on the
real magazine even though this is something I particularly wanted to improve on
– was one of my three points to make it sized where they can fit easily –
didn’t really manage to achieve this but it still worked out and writing /
images didn’t overlap
