FINAL EVALUATION

This evaluation is to show what I have done throughout all of this coursework starting from the very begining and the very first time I started to use Photoshop when creating a school magazine (a front cover and contents page) for our preliminary task, to the finishing product of my new Music Magazine named InD.

I have now completed the foundation portfolio task, using photoshop. It is called ‘InD’ I decided to create a new music magazine within the 'indie/rock' genre. During this course I have produced a front cover, contents page and a double page spread including images I had taken and interviews.
This will show you the stages I had to complete and the obsticles I had to cross when creating both of these products. I have displayed these points in a simple slideshow presentation and have written in more detail about them all to give you a clear veiw of it.

In comparison with my magazine is NME magazine, this is in the same genre as what I have aimed my magazine on. Here I am looking at the conventions of both music magazines, my own production and NME and seeing how they use, develop and challenge each other.

As you can see in both magazines, you can see from my research and planning that I have tried to include the main picture of a band, similar writing and the title being bold and standing out compared to the rest of the front cover.

Here I am comparing my contents page for InD magazine with another indie/rock magazine contents. They are quite similar in layout as I liked the way that this magazine used boxes and bold writing as the headings for each main section of the magazine, so I tried to incorporate this into my work too. Also both portray the correct message to the main target audience and the main features within the magazine. Both also present a clear house style and the same font throughout the magazine contents similar to the front cover.

My double page spread here has used the house style colours that fits nicely into the magazines genre. New bands and gig/ tour listings are used to attract the audience in this type of genre of magazine, so I also tried to portray this in my magazine by creating a new band called 'The Nerve' and also adding made up gig dates using the same font throughout and keeping the markets needs and wants in mind. The house style has been carried throughout each page which can be clearly seen here with the blue, red, black and white colours.

When completing this task I had to keep the target market in mind. To show how I have based my magazine on a specific target group I have compared it to a pop magazine 'Top Of The Pops' to show the differences between the two. This pop magazine uses bright colours, with different content and celebrities that attract a different audience. Whereas my magazine uses more of 'new' band information and darker blocks of colour, this attracts my social group more than the pop magazine would as it is not their style and what they would want within a magazine.

After researching different publishers, I have gained understanding of the main competitoirs and how they fulfil their audiences needs and wants. I think if I were to publish InD I would use IPC Media. This is because of the fact that they published NME magazine which is in the same genre as mine and they have a high success rate. I think if I publish with IPC my magazine would reach the target audience well as statistics show IPC's magazines they publish reach most of our population within Britain.

I could have used other publishers such as Emap and Bauer. The first magazine that Bauer had published was Bella which is a womens magazine still going strong today. Some other examples of magazines that Bauer publish are:
Kerrang, Q, FHM, Mother and Baby

EMAP is a British media company, specialising in the production of business-to-business magazines, and the organisation of business events and conferences. In 2006 it had a turnover of £1.154 billion. Some examples of magazines that EMAP have produced are:

Smash Hits, SPORT, Mean Machines, Internet Magazine and Computer and Video games Magazine.

At the beginning of 2008, Bauer expanded its portfolio further by acquiring Emap’s Radio and Consumer Magazine divisions and changed the name of these new UK businesses to Bauer Media.

I did not use these other publisher companies to distribute my magzine as I think that IPC MEDIA would be much more of a success if they create InD. Also because of the fact that they produced NME magazine which is in the same genre as what I am aiming my magazine to be in. Therefore because of this I think that my magazine will become a great success and reach my specific target audience.

The main target audience for InD magazine are teenage to young adults interested in the indie/rock genre of music. This is portrayed through the colours and language used within the magazine. The uses and gratifications for this magazine is mainly escapism and/or personal relationships (with celebrities) as the target audience leave the 'real' world and get to read interviews on 'new bands' which helps them get closer and get to know them better.

I tried to attract my audience through the front cover of the magazine as this is what hooks and draws in the reader, this meant I had to think about this the most so I got it right. If I didnt then I would not attract the main audience and would therefore be a failure of a magazine as they will read other ones instead. The exclusive interview on the front cover is to entise the reader and the low price would encourage them to purchase the magazine. This effect is used in most magazine within this genre as this is what the target audience want and expect within these magazines. Other factors such as the use of colours and font and language styles are also used to help entise the reader too because I wanted the colours to relate to the genre of the media.

The learning process was extremly challenging when creating my InD magazine. This was especially hard when we first started to use Photoshop, I felt when using this program I was not creating as good a quality as others in the class and therefore put myself down because of the work produced. However to overcome this, our class was lucky enough to have one of our school IT technicians in one of our lessons to talk us through what can be done on Paint Shop Pro, this really helped me as I took notes on what was said so that when it came to us using the program i could refer back to the notes i had previously written. When i got stuck using this and the notes did not help me I either tried to work it out how to do it myself or if that didnt work I asked other peers or teachers for help. Doing this not only let me get my up to a higher standard but I also learnt a lot from listening to other people.

I have also learnt a great deal about planning and research. This has made me think more carefully about what should be included and how this should be produced, for example how to place the 'actors' when taking pictures or even what type of font to use to show the genre I am trying to put across to the reader clear enough.

At the begining of this entire project I was very confused about how to use the blog feature we were asked to keep a kind of up-to-date diary in. However once I started to get the hang of this and was able to add images and slideshow presentations to it, I think it helped me show what problems I had, how I overcame them and what I had achieved throughout. It will definatly help me in the future if I need to use the internet for this type of work again.

As you can see in this slide after using and practising Paint Shop Pro a few times there is a dramatic difference between both my preliminary task and the final task of creating a music magazine. This difference has been achieved by me overcoming problems that have occured, asking for help when needed, and planning and researching musch more than the first task. Nearly everytime I went onto the Paint Shop Pro program I developed a skill and learnt something new which I am proud of as it reflected in my work.

To overview of my foundation portfolio I have learnt so much through the process. It took me a while to get in the swing of things but through trial and error, and definatly a lot of hard work during most aspects of this project I have come to a suitable standard and a professional looking music magazine.

Within this presentation I have shown what I have achieved and overcome the challenges I have faced. If you would like to view the slides bigger you can click on them and they will open a new window and appear bigger so they are clearer to see.

I am very proud and happy with my final achievement, and I have enjoyed planning, researching and finally creating a finished music magazine. Even though it was challenging in some areas, I have tried my hardest in order to get my magazine to a high enough standard. I have learnt that to create a product such as this one, you will need hardwork and determination to finish it.

Easter Holiday Work

During the Easter Holidays I have taken pictures which I have added to the double page and front page of my magazine. I made these pictures into 'New Album' covers which is a feature within my magazine itself. I chose to take some pictures of my brother as he has the 'indie-ish' look about him which they are all stereotypically looked like.
I took a few images but some i may not use as they do not suit the image I was particulally looking for.


Here is one of the images i had taken but may not use for the front cover, however I am thinkning about adding it on the front cover so that the whgite space I do have on this page is completly covered, it also relates well to the feature within my magazine.





I asked him to stand infront of a clear background and wear these kind of clothes (polo top and 'retro' sunglasses and 'smoking' a ciggarette.) as the overall look looks good as it realtes to the theme of my magazine. If I had him wearing a hoodie and holding a microphone it may look like he was a rapper and would therefore not go with the magazines image and music style. The clear background also allows me to edit it without it being a hassle/ harder to achieve a good background.










Another one of the images I had taken was this one. I prefer this image to the other one as I like the way he is looking at the camera and the colouring in his skin and the whiteness of the background. This image also allows me to edit the background if I really wanted to for example adding a fill colour to make it brighter, or writing text across the emptiness of the background.
I am very pleased with these images as I was aiming for them to look like this and thought I had planned it well enough to get the final image that I photographed.


<-I think I will use this image as the 'New Album' cover on the double page.






After adding these images to the magazine I will need to add a name and text to the cover as it will look more like an album cover, than if it was just a plain picture like this one.

Thursday 2nd April

During this double lesson i came accross an obsticle with my final piece of my music magazine, this was that I could not locate my double page spread i had written within the previous week at home. This ment i had to spend this lesson re-writing it so I was up-to-date again.
However when I had finished this i was able to carry on and improve my work by adding other effects which are included on Paint Shop Pro to make my magazine attract the target audience better. It enabled me to use an effect which was already on the program to pull all of the colour scheme/ house style altogether to make it look more professional.

I only need to finish off little parts of my magazine which I will complete over the half term.

Tuesday 31st March

In this lesson we was given notes which will help us when we come to do our evaluation after we have finished the music magazines. We will have to answer the questions within our evaluation to make it the best possible description of the work we have produced. Some of the questions we have to think about are:

• How did you approach the two tasks (preliminary task and the main task)?
• How did you manage your time?
• How did you organise your human resources (such as images)

For the second half of the lesson we was given more time to carry on with our main task of a music magazine. Within this half of the lesson I was able to complete the interview I have made up for my double page. I could do this because I wrote out the interview on to paper within my spare time which made it quicker and easier for me to do.

Thursday 26th March

This double lesson I was able to try to catch up with others in the class as I have been off school for the past couple of lessons.

As we were in the computer room this enabled me to carry on with the music magazine I am creating. I achieved a lot this lesson because I had a look at other peoples work and magazines that relate to my genre of music. This then gave me more ideas of colours I could use, and other techniques that I should try out to improve my work.


I also had a look at some videos on You Tube to help me see what else I could do on Photoshop, I did this as another member of our class said they had a look at some of the videos featured on here and said it helped them a great deal, so I thought I'd try it for myself. After doing this I have discovered more skills that I can use within my final product.

Thursday 19th& Friday 20th& Tuesday 23rd March

I was not able to attend these lessons as I was off school in hospital.
I am going to catch up when I get back to school, and hopefully finish my music magazine in time for the deadline.

Tuesday 17th March

This lesson was all about 'Uses and Gratifications'. This lesson really helped me when thinking about what the magazine should definatly consist of.

I learnt that the uses and gratifications of a magazine should be four things:

• Escapism


• Personal relationships


• Personal identity


• Surveillance

All of these things help relate to the target audience and will then meet the needs and wants of the target audience I am aiming at.

Friday 13th March

This lesson we carried on with the main task (creating a music magazine). I decided to write out my interview with my made up band the Nerve. This was so i can then just copy twhat I write into the magazine when I am on a computer.
I used magazines such as NME and Q to help me decide what went into the interview. I also used these mediums to make up a name for the band I am interviewing. I found two band names and combined the two to make 'The Nerve'.
I finished this interview for homework as then I am up to date and will then be able to focus on other parts of the magazine.

Thursday 12th March

This double lesson we had a chance to go on the computers to start creating our front covers for our main task.
We used photoshop like we did when we created our school magazine front covers. I only started creating this and will try to finish at least the front cover before next lesson so I can just carry on with the contents page and double page spread.
I then started thinking about what I am going to include in the interveiw with an 'indie' band, I am going to undertake within my magazine.
The images of the band I will take next lesson so i can add the images to my front cover.

Tuesday 10th March

This lesson we had to use our mock up of our magazine which we created for homework to design what our images we will take would look like. Thinking about what camera angles and movement would suit and create the right images for the magazine.
We then had to think about what will be good articles for the magazine and what we should include in them.

This is the brief mock up I have created in order to help with the main task on the computer.

Front cover Contents page

Double page spread

Friday 6th March

This single lesson we all planned out what had to be included in our main task for it to be a success. We had to think about the audience we was aiming at, the genre, the uses and gratifications of it, house style and the actual contents of it.
We then had to think about images we will need to take for our original photos thinking about mise en scene, props, costumes, location etc.

Our homework is to produce a four page mock up of our music magazine.

Thursday 5th March

This double lesson we had a task to create a powerpoint presentation of one of the genres of magazines we have been studying.
I decided to do NME magazine because I researched and found a variety of information about it. By using the internet and the magazine itself I was able to produce a good quality presentation with main facts on it including the readership, main stories/articles, artist facts(interveiws) etc.

I did not finish my presentation as i was browsing on the NME website for a while, but if I did plan my time more efficiently then i would be able to produce a better presentation overall.

Here is my presentation:

Tuesday 3rd March

In this lesson we had to write an essay about comparing the website and the printed version of a magazine. It was under timed, exam conditions.
We had to look at differences of them both and how they attract the target audience. I wrote about the Hip Hop weekly magazine as this is what i have been studying and researching the website for homework. I found out that most magazines keep their house style on their website as well as the printed version so the audince can connect the layout and colour scheme to the printed version when online.

Friday 27th January

During this lesson we all had a certain music genre magazine to look through and make notes about it. The magazine I had was a hip hop genre.
We had to write what was included in this type of magazine, because our homework is to look at the online version of this genre of magazine, this is so we can make note of the differences and similarities about them both.

We then had to think about how it targets its specific audeince and write a short essay piece of writing to explain this using our notes we had just made.

Thursday 26th February- double lesson

In this double lesson we finished off our preliminary task- school magazine front cover as we had a computer room booked.
After finishing the front cover and contents page we then had to look at different music magazines, this is so we could get ideas for our main task that we will need to do before the next half term. We looked at online and print versions of each genre of music magazine.

Tuesday 23rd February

In this lesson we started on our main task, which is to create a music magazine.
We had to work in groups of 3's and 4's, I worked with Dave, Stewart and Dan. In these groups we worked together to brainstorm 4 genres of music which were pop, RnB/hip hop, dance and rock, we said what types of bands were in these groups and the language and style the listeners of these different types of music were.
This will help us when creating our final magazine becuase we may chose one of these genres and it will give us a head start as we would already have ideas on the brainstorm.

Thursday 12th February

This double lesson we had to create a front cover of a school magazine using the pictures we had origianly taken for our pleminary task.

We all used photosghop to edit pictures, add text etc, to create our perfect school magazine front cover for St Maks. I named mine 'Mark This Spot' and included the logo, and a range of pictures and text to attract my target audience. Mine was also a 'sixth form special' as I thought this may be easier for me to do because I would be able to relate myself to it.

Tuesday 10th February

In this lesson we was given cameras in pairs and was told to take pictures for a school magazine (pleminary task). We had to use our plans which we created in the previous lesson so we had an idea of what our school magazine front cover was going to look like.
We had to think about mise en scene when doing this task because then when it comes to editing the pictures we would not have to alter it alot.

After taking the pictures which we needed we then had to go back to the classroom and upload them onto the shared documnets so that we can now use them in the next lesson when we actually create the front cover using the Photoshop programme.

Friday 6th February.

This lesson we planned for our pleminary task (school magazine front cover).
We had to think what we was going to include, and what is needed on it. The things that are needed on it are at least one medium close up of a student and a title etc.
We hand drew a few ideas to help us think about the perfect magazine for our target audience.

This will help us for next lesson as we are going to be taking the pictures for the front cover itself.

Thursday 5th February- Double lesson

This double lesson we used photoshop on the school computers to create a Nature magazine front cover, using the pictures we had taken from the previous lesson.

Personally I found this quite hard to use as i was not familiar with the programme. I did try though, using a picture of a squirrel we had taken, text tool and colour tools on the programme I done the best I could to achieve an attractive front cover.
At the end of this lesson I thoguht it was quite good, but I could have done better by finding a better colour font to use so it didnt blend into the picture as much as it did and maybe do a bit more to the picture.

Friday 30th January

This lesson we was given a camera for each group and we had to go out and find pictures of 'nature' that would be suitable for a nature magazine. I liked this lesson as we was able to go out of the classroom and use our own initiative to find a good picture for this task.

My group (Me, Dave and Dale) went to the pond accross from the school and took pictures there.
I took a picture of a waterfall there which i thought this was part of nature. But then as we went back to the classroom we realised that this was not nature and had to go back out and find a better picture. This was a problem as we wasted time when we could have got an even better picture.
We are going to use these pictures to practice on photoshop next lesson.

Thursday 29th January- second half of double lesson

This lesson we was given two coloured front covers of two differnt University magazines. One was for undergraduates called Newsman, and the other for post graduates called Quad.
We had to annotate both front covers pointing out the design features and see how each of them differ.
We had to think about layout, colour, font, language, presentation etc, and see how they relate to their target audience.

We was set homework to write a detailed analysis with explanations using P.E.E-->point, example, explain.
The more annotation and notes we had on both front covers the easier the homework would seem.
This would help us because when creating our own magazine front cover we will be able to see which points were best to use, and which ones not too, as they might not relate to our target audience.

Thursday 29th January

In this lesson we had a talk that was all about Photoshop and using it to create pictures that are proffessional enough to go on a front cover of a magazine.

We was shown how to use all of the tools on the programme such as, layer palet, resizing the canvas, cropping images, the lassoo tool and many more. We had to make notes as this will help us alot when creating our own magazine and front cover.
I found this lesson interesting as i have never used this programme properly before and it has tought me a lot.

Thursday 27th January

This lesson we learnt all about magazines and how they target their particular audience.
All media products whether it be magazines or tv etc, have a target audience which relates to their gender, age and class.
Magazines also use short headlines to 'hook' the reader in using 'AIDA' can achieve this.
AIDA means- Attract Interest Desire and Action.

I learnt that the magazines attract the audiences by using tone- the way they present it, register- development of ideas, 'visuals and copy' such as wordplay or bulletpoints.
I also learnt what 'colloquial language' meant, this menas that the magazines uses everday phrases that their target audience use and the language is more friendly and informal.

Homework- school magazine

For this piece of homework we needed to look at an online version of a school magazine. I decided to look at an issue of Burnt Mill News found at:
http://www.burntmill.essex.sch.uk/BM_School_News/Volume_4_issue_8.pdf


Firstly when looking at this it had a clear name and logo so it is easy recognisable, i also viewed other burnt mill news magazines and this is had a clear house style throughout them all. It is just a plain white background with the same font writing so it is easily readable, and all had the name and logo's in the same positions. The logo's on the magazine here are both the burnt mill school logo and a perfoming arts logo to show that it has a performing arts satus as it is a perfoming arts school.
This magazine is aimed at all teachers, students and parents. I can tell this because it has a lot of information about the school itself and has an email address so the school is easy to contact straight away. There is also part of the magazine that tells the reader about 'whats coming up in the half term' This is mostly aimed at the parents because they then know what their child is doing at school. I would say that this is used as a way of communication between the readers and the school.
Finally I think that this magazine does what it is aimed to do, which is to give the reader information about the school and its students. It is clear and easy to understand so that people of different age groups will be able to know everything going on. And as it is free and is available to be read online this magazine will have a lot of readers and therefore its circulation numbers will be high too.

22nd January

Todays lesson was about pitching our idea about a new school magazine which we was talking about last lesson.

I learnt how much it actually costs to make the magazine from scratch and which form of magazine will be best. I also learnt how important it is to do primary research to find out what are the customer/ target market preferences. This will then help sell the magazine as it will be aimed at the target audience well.
The things me and my group could have done better was, to talk about research and maybe show a mock up of the front cover to give a visual product to the audience.

20th January

In the lesson today we was given our first pleminary task. Which was to think about creating a front cover for a new school magazine. Also thinking about what should be included in it, financing the magazine, advertising, iconography, images and target audience most importantly.

We learnt that disipline and creativity is needed for this task and we need to 'K.I.S.S'--> keep it simple.