Evaluation (not finished)

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups ?

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

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

As my audience is between the ages of 17-25, this is still quite a young minded group of people. The fact that it is aimed at females aswell really makes the use of bright, light colours fitting with that genre. Although this is quite a stereotypical comment, friends of mine have also stated this fact. I have also used a model that is 18 years old (but looks older) which allows the audience to connect with him as a peer, and be interested and maybe even inspired by his look/work. My audience will have an artistic/musical outlook, and will be attracted to the small details such as torn paper, and scanned materials - as these are not typical elements of a magazine. I also think these things, however insignificant they are, make my magazine individual.

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

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

Final Touches - Feathering Lettering

As I noticed that my lettering had a pixelated grey/white line around it I decided to try out techniques to remove it, I first used the paintbrush tool, picked out the shade of black that was appropriate and turned the opaquity down and then simply manually went over the lines.
After realising this took to long and wasen't very professional looking I decided to try out using the feathering option. I selected the area around the image, turned feathering to 5 and then used this effect on the image. I think it gives a much better look to the text.

Before Feathering

After Feathering

Final Adaptions to Contents Page

Adding Article to Double Page Spread

Adding Text to Double Page Spread

I decided to test out the test on my double page spread, After trying pastel shades of yellow, blue and green I decided that black actually looked the best and was the easiest to read. After testing different font types I found that Tw Cen MT was my favourite, as I tried to find an unusual font that would fit the magazines theme, but actually a plain text looked better, but still quite feminine. I used the font in size - 9.25 pt as this made it clearly readable, but also left a lot of space to right a fairly long article.

Double Page Spread Interview

So jamie how does it feel to suddenly be recognised almost everywhere you go?

Its absolutely mad yeah! I was even asked for my autograph the other day, thats when the whole thing really hit home.

And is this industry what you imagined it to be?

Honestly - it’s harder work than i expected, but I have been through much harder to get to where I am today. Its loads of fun and you get to meet some pretty amazing people so the hard work definitely pays off.

Sounds great, whos the most influential person you’ve met so far?

Alex Turner for definite! Its amazing to be able to talk to someone of such high status and still have things in common, for what he’s acheived he’s so down to earth - Great guy.

Yeah he’s a reknowned nice guy, but how has this whole process been affecting your ego?

Well i’ve never been full of myself, what’s the point? Everybodies equal at the end of the day - just some people are luckier than others. I guess.

Speaking of luck, with fame usually comes a lot of freebies, have you received anything substantial?

Well actually my favourite brand Stockholm, sent me out 3 sweatshirts and 2 pairs of jeans last week. They’d noticed me wearing the brand in a few press photo’s and it’s been giving them publicity so I guess they were repaying the favour

Wow, that must’ve been a nice surprise. So speaking of fashion, is it an influential thing to you, or do you see it as just clothes?

It’s definitely not just clothes, I think the way you dress reflects the person you are, thats why i’m always dressed in light hearted colours with subtle accessories. I dont take myself too seriously - and I think that shows through the way I dress.

That’s an interesting way to look at things, so your style isn’t influenced by anybody in particular?

I see my style as a geeked up, hip hop style, and i suppose if I could nail my influences down to a singular person it’d be Pharrel Williams.

Thats unusual as he dresses a lot like you, but you have very contrasting music styles.

Yeah, I guess my music and my look contradict each other, as most people imagine acoustic artists to model themselves asthough they were brought up on a farm, but I was brought up in a city, surrounded by street style.

Well it is obvious to see that the balance between the two works really well. Unfortunately it seems that i've squeezed as much time out of you as i'm going to be given, but as myself and the in flux readers would love to hear more about you and your rise to fame, maybe we can revisit this interview again further down your promising music career. It's been a pleasure speaking with you, and I wish you the best of luck for the future.

I wanted to keep the questions and answers to a style that would fit the artists outlook, he is not an excitable person, nor is he obnoxious and rude, he is infact a reserved person, that is passionate about his career. I feel the interview is ok, it could maybe do with some tweaks so that it flows better though.

Adding Page Numbers

Adding page numbers was straight forward as I already had the font type ready from the contents page. My contents page was named as number "2" as behind the front cover would be named as the first page. For my double page spread, I decided to only number one of the pages, as it is altogether one article. I decided to use this technique - not only because it will be much neater, and allow the article to have a better continuity but also as I have seen this technique used before in successful magazines.

Front cover Final Draft

My front cover has turned out quite different to my mock up. Naturally this happened as my mock up was very rushed and not thought through very well. For this I wanted it to be very bright and welcoming without being too 'pop' looking, to make this more subtle I used ripped brown paper to neutralise against the bright colours. I think the pastel colours look really good against the high contrasted, black and white photograph, and they really compliment each other. The brown paper helped to show continuity through the magazine, but also I used the same fonts and things such as scanned ribbons which I think make the magazine stand out from regular ones. I think having the white background, rather than a brown paper background works much better, it allows the piece to flow together, whereas before everything looked much more 'blocky.' It took me a while to come up with a layout I was happy with but I feel this layout looks good, with the main article being in a larger font allowing it to stand out. I'm also very happy with the masthead I think it suits the overall look of the magazine, and quite obviously fits in. I also think that colouring in the shape on the photograph of jamie, made it all fit together a bit more as it keeps the photo in with the colour theme.

Choosing Main Photograph For Front Cover

I have decided to use this photograph of jamie for the main focus of my front cover. I have chosen it as I really like his stance and the angles it creates, allowing my to work around it - using it as a center-point. I also like the boldness of the shape on his sweater, and this can be used to stand out on the front cover. Along with this i believe his body language seems quite reserved, and this could entice a reader to want to read the article to find out more about the mysterious looking boy. He also looks quite relaxed, and not over posed which fits very well with the kind of person that this artist is.
Unfortunately, the photo quality isn't brilliant but that is down to the quality of my camera and I am not advanced enough at photoshop to understand how to make the best of its quality.

Changing Double Page Spread After Feedback

My main focus for the double page spread was with the continuity, to fulfill this I spread the title over the two pages and used the lace over both pages. I also used the polaroid effect again to connect it to the contents page and make the magazine flow. In my opinion this page is aesthetically pleasing and fits my initial magazine brief very well.

Creating Masthead

After analysing three mastheads, I took the overall idea of the 'Super Super' magazine masthead as I like the fact it doesn't dominate the whole page. Here are 3 mastheads of the same shape, but different colour schemes.

I like this colour composition although the yellow and green reminds me a little of camouflage.

I really like this colour palette as they are both really girly colours that will show really well the target markets influence. I think if it was boyish colours, and having a male image it could look a little masculine.

Although i love the colours in this seperately, I don't think they look right together - they make it seem quite masculine.

My favourite of the 3 is definitely the second one, I do feel that the colour may need to be intensified a little though so it becomes slightly more bold. I am really happy with the look of this masthead and as it is of the same font as my coverlines, (I intend to make the masthead larger than the coverlines) it will fit in very well.

Analysing Mastheads

Pop magazine - This is a good idea as although the masthead is quite small it is really artistic and unusual and I think that looks really good. The only problem is is that it contrasts so heavily with th style on the rest of the masthead - it looks futuristic while the rest looks handwritten and flowing. Although this does look good it wouldn't really fit the overall look of my own magazine, however on this magazine it looks more at home.

Super Super magazine - I really like the look of this, I like the fact that its compact in the corner although it is two words, and usually a title like that would be spread across the top of the page. It does work well having the words layered, especially as its the same word twice. I do think this could work well with my magazine title too though. The only reason why this wouldn't work with my magazine is the actual font it is too structured, not feminine and arty enough.

Love magazine - This masthead is very different from the other two, this takes up the whole page but I like it because it's only four letters long which allows it to be very spread out. I like the fact that the main photograph is layered over it too - this suggests that people should know the magazine enough to not have to rely on reading the title of it. This could work for my magazine, however as my title is two words I think it would look too common for my liking.

Changing Contents After Feedback

I decided to change my font from Sketchetica to Skritchy as I feel it gives a more fun effect that works better with the look of my magazine. I was asked to include photographs of other people, so I used the idea of the band 'The Lilacs' and took photographs of three girls that I felt fitted the right look for the magazine. I scanned and editted some polaroid photographs to give it a more textures look, aswell as this i scanned ribbons, a safety pin and a needle. I feel that it looks much better than the first final draft and I am pleased with the outcome.

Ideas for Framing Photographs

For this effect I found a photograph of a polaroid on the internet (if I do use this technique I will take my own photo), used magic wand tool to select the inner frame, and then pasted in my image.
I really really like this effect and I think it fits my magazines theme perfectly, I think it could be used on my contents page to change the main photo being used (change due to advice given through feedback).

Final Mock of Contents Page

After finishing this mock, and getting feedback from my teachers I have been advised to look further into the following things;

-Changing main photograph as it doesn't fit the atmosphere of the rest of the page

-Adding more photographs, so it's not all based around jamie.

Final Mock Double Page Spread

Effects/Skills/Techniques I have used to create this double page spread:

- To allow the brown paper to fade into the background rather than stand out I feathered the edges at 20 px, I think this worked very well and looks alot better than just having a raw cut image.

-I turned the contrast up and the brightness down on the photos that run along the side to give a very bold effect, against the faded colour of the background image (i'd turned down the saturation to give this effect).

-I scanned ribbons, and buttons in and cut them out, I then turned the brightness down and the contrast up to give them a bold effect.

- I used the magic wand tool to select certain areas that needed colouring, e.g. title font

- I changed the opaquity to 75% on the photos along the side to allow them to fade into the background - without being lost altogether.

After showing my teachers my double page spread I have been advised to experiment further with the following things;

-Contrast/brightness on jamie in the main photograph as it is a little too bright,

-Making the page symmetrical so that nothing will get lost into the fold,

-Experiment with fonts for the article, and maybe use fridge magnets for the heading.

My Colour Palette

Other than black and white, which will be used to outline texts, and photographs, this will be my chosen colour palette. Rather than having the traditional three-colour-palette, I think it is fair that I allow myself an extra colour seeing as the colours I have chosen are so very subtle.

I am really happy with my choice of colour palette as I think they work really well, especially contrasting with a greyscale element.

I chose to use green, yellow, pink and blue - as they are very common, primary and secondary colours, and look good in such a pastel shade.

Some Quick Photo Edits

I decided to do a few quick edits to see which photo's I think have the potential to work on the front cover. I chose the most striking mid shots as this is what kind of photo I want to use. I simply retouched (due to blemishes) and played with saturation, contrast and exposure...

Magazine Photoshoot

On the 21st of February I took the photos for my magazine, I used Jamie Hives an 18 year old student for this as I thought his overall look fitted the look for the magazine. I chose his outfits, and tried to make use of statement colours and patterns so that I can add handmade effects like when I draw on buttons, (hence the fact that I chose clothing with bold pictures such as the rocket, and eyeball). I wanted to keep his look bright but also relatively smart and stylish to fit in with the fashion theme. I thought the weather, along with the strong natural light (helped along by the reflections from the snow) was perfect for my photography. From a film of almost 100 photographs, i've condensed them down to my favourite 39. Most of my photographs I kept relatively simple so that I can cut out the background and make it white, but I also used some derelict barns to add a different look, and I personally love them photos. I've also decided to make this a winter special magazine, that looks forward to the upcoming summer, (hence the snowy weather). On a few of the close up photo's I used a burst setting to try and capture many random expressions, and then single out the best ones. Overall I am very happy with my film of photos, and look forward to editting them further to see the outcome.