Finished Products.

original images.

Evaluation Question 7 - Skills development

Looking back at your preliminary task (the college magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

As you can see within my college magazine there are very limited Photoshop skills used, this is down to me not knowing what I could really do with the program, I didn't know how or where I should use any of the tools. After using the program numerous time I became more confident with it, it became allot easier to see where I could use tools to improve my images. Starting with my college magazine cover, it looks very simple and boring

although you can see I have used the lighting render effect to brighten up my model. I used a very simple masthead with a few very simple cover stories, all very limited in looks and meaning. My new music magazine cover on the other hand looks allot more professional due to a number of newly learned Photoshop techniques and research into other magazines design. Before starting my music magazine research I had no idea where to start with designing a magazine you can see the lack of ideas in the college magazine's contents page, researching definitely help allot during production.

Whilst using Photoshop I learnt about the healing brush tool its used to remove impurity's in the image such as red eye or spots I found it very useful to make my models seem flawless to the readers and make my models connote they are perfect. A very useful tool of image manipulation was the blur tool I used it to blur the background of model to make sure she was the most important part in the image pulling all focus onto her, this is exactly what I wanted as I needed my audience to look at her and not be distracted. The quick selection tool became very useful when creating my cover its used to quickly select similar coloured areas so picking out my model from his original became a easy task. The layout of my contents page was difficult to create until I found Photoshop's ruler tool it made the design and layout much easier to do. I have learnt allot over the course of the project, whilst creating my music magazine I had a more focused audience than my college magazine and I learned how I needed to create my magazine specific for them down to very small details. I learnt how everything from font to language to the colour scheme can represent a different audience.

Evaluation Question 6 - Technologies

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Through out production and evaluation I have learnt many things, like how to
use new programs to dealing with new websites.
For the bulk of production I was using the program Adobe Photoshop CS4. Before starting the project I had only used the program a few times before and that was for small tasks using the very basic tools. After a few hours of playing with the program I found it very easy to use and find your way around. Whilst using the program I was surprised by the range of tools, effects and the general range of things you can do with the program. The more I used the program the better I think I became at applying the different effects and using the program.The only disadvantage of using photoshop i believe is the detail it goes into for example when blurring images it will ask you to define how much to blur down to a pixel, with no knowledge of the scale I had to guess whilst doing tasks much like it which normally ended up with having to redo the task again. I learnt that photoshop is a very powerful program when it comes to image editing it can be used manipulate images and give ordinary images extra meanings.


Within this project I have also learnt how to use the website blogger, I had no experience with this site or even blogging so I was unsure about the site when I started using it. Before long I had redesigned my blog and became comfortable with the layout of the site, It didn't take long to do with the easy to follow instructions and clear setting of the site. I found using a site like blogger is very useful as you can log on and use it anywhere and continue working on any computer. I also like how you can add anything to a post such as images videos and sound clips which make the site allot more interesting.

Another online site I used was flickr, Again with this site I had no previous experience using. Using the site I don't think is as easy as blogger as I have been using flickr for just as long yet there is still a large amount of things I don't know how to use, Although this is mainly down to the reason that I haven't needed to use the additional functions of the site. Flickr has been very useful in how it lets you annotate you images once you have uploaded them, whats even better is how it lets you link those posts across a range of other online websites which has been very useful when evaluating my magazine.

Evaluation Question 5 - Attracting the audience

How did you attract/address your audience?
click the three images below too see.

Evaluation Question 4 - Target audience

Who would be the audience for your media product?

My audience
Aged 16 - 22 as these ages are still young and generally in touch with current music and still have a large disposable income, As my age range are still young they are likely to be a student or in a part time job leaving them with plenty of spare time.
The ideal gender for my audience would be male as i believe females already have a specific magazine which appeals to them such as "OK" and "Heat" as men don't have these large scale magazines i believe this would be where my magazine fits in, Looking back in my notes I created a audience profile when planning my magazine which I still think is very relevant to my finished magazine. I think it portrays the universe of my audience very well.

I also already made a audience profile to what my target audience would look like. There are many details into what my target audience wear what they do in there spare time what their interests are.

Research I conducted earlier I found my audience would most likely fit into these stereotypes.

'Indie Scenesters' http://uktribes.com/?p=tribe&id=7
'Skaters' http://uktribes.com/?p=tribe&id=11
'Casuals' http://uktribes.com/?p=tribe&id=21
'Young Alts' http://uktribes.com/?p=tribe&id=30

Evaluation Question 3 - Institutions

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Looking for the right institution is vital for magazines as you will need to have the right distribution specific for your magazines needs, Such as a mass market magazine like NME who use a large institution called IPC, they would not be ideal for me as they already have a number of other music magazines and operate on a larger scale than I think would be necessary for my magazine. I would be looking for a medium sized institution for quite large distribution across the UK. Dennis, I believe would be the right distributor for my magazine as they have a a huge customer base they have;
2.2 million magazine readers each month
10 million unique users online
176 million online page impressions each month
Dennis do not have any existing music magazines under there distribution which means this would be a different task and could cause some problems. Although I think they would be up for expanding into the music distribution sector as they are a growing business. Dennis can also help with any marketing, advertising and publishing problems which many other businesses have used and to have drawn great results from.