My Front cover my main product that is on the left image above, is the product that I produced after a very basic start with the right image of a college magazine 'ENCM', by just analysing both of the above images, you can see that I learnt a great deal about the conventions and formatting of magazine front covers. They need to be bold, clear to read and attractive to the target audience. For example of a change between the two products above, I have used a image of the model but changed the background to a back colour rather than include the original background by feathering the image so it is smooth against the background, this gives emphasis on the model rather than a unprofessional magazine image that includes the classroom. The model on 'Buzz' also has a outer glow, and has been adjusted to colour so that she is black and white which relates to the house-colour, something which isnt clear at all in my premilinary task.
The use of conventions on 'Buzz' magazine cover are much clearer to the audience and much more typical to a real magazine than 'ENCM' magazine cover, for example.. 'Buzz' has bold coverlines that have a range of font type, and colour to show the difference between a coverline title and the coverline information underneath. The premilinary task failed in the coverline perspective as they are uneadable in certain parts of the cover due to the background clashing with the font colour, something that I learnt about Photoshop that you can change font colour very precisely within changing a very small part of the text or maybe even just half of a letter so that the background dosent cover the text you want to attract the audience with.
I have also used a sticker on the 'Buzz' magazine, as I know that they are typical to magazines that are advertising something inside that may be content or a competition. Also, the headline of the name of the magazine is clear, bold, and stands out from a far distance rather than the 'ENCM' premilinary cover that fails to stand out, and is not the main eye-catcher to the cover like it should be. The barcode looks alot more part of the magazine cover itself on the main task product rather than the premilinary, as the white background on the barcode section on the 'ENCM' cover looks extremely unprofessional and cheap.
The coverlines on the front cover of 'Buzz' also start with a subject, the subject being 'EXCLUSIVE' at the top attracts the audience to that issue, so people who are impulse buyers may see that issue and be attracted to the magazine that month in particular, and solus readers who are loyal will be attracted to see what exclusive content the magazine has to offer that month. However, my premilinary task has unspecific content under each subject as the reader will know nothing about the genre of the magazine from the cover, the audience that should be targeted is not clear at all, 'Buzz' contains conventions that make the 'Indie' target audience clear. 'ENCM' could appeal to anyone in the college, because of the lack of direction to advertising the content and style of the cover.
The overall complexity of the magazine cover has increased a fair deal, the layers and image editing in Photoshop is more effective to the audience rather than the simple basic editing and cutting of the image for the premilinary task. By gathering results that I have shown on my blog to prove the preparation of understanding the audience that I wanted to target and what they would want from my magazine, as well as how the magazine should come across.
On my premilinary task, the cover was based on something that I designed without full knowledge of format, conventions and looking at a range of real magazine covers, this may be the consequence of the cover being so unprofessional, whereas with more knowledge of real music magazine front covers, analyzing them, I came up with the main product of 'Buzz' that seemed more professional.
The images above are: on the left, my main product contents page, and on the right, the premilinary contents page. The two are very different, again, due the lack of understanding of conventions and editing of magazine contents pages. The premilinary task is very simple Photoshop uses, like the boxing, and using the shape tool to line out certain areas for different information. The main product content page contains one simple bold title next to a indentical headline of 'Buzz' next to the 'contents' title, this advertises the magazine again, the constant reminder of the brand name makes the reader fixed on the magazine and influences them to be loyal to the brand name. This technique is also used in real magazines, so this made my main task more realistic to magazine formatting. The date issue is at the top of the main product magazine contents page, so the reader knows what issue they are reading, so are not confused by any content that may not be relevant as much by the end of the month or the next months issue. In contrast to this, my premilinary task had no dates on the contents page, this may effect the professional look and reliability of the magazine.
Again, I used a image that was cut, feathered, shadowed, and colour adjusted so that the image appeared professional and in-place in the contents, the 'ENCM' magazine doesnt show an image, but if it did, it would probably be untidy, with clear selection failures, where my basic skills were letting the magazines appearance down. For 'Buzz' I used real magazine contents pages to come up with a style model for mine, using similar colours of the numbers and seperation of the features and regular contents, completing a tidy, order of appeal to the issue itself (featurs first) and didnt overwhelm the readers with contents, like in 'ENCM', most page numbers are shown, whereas there is more mystery to the rest of the magazine in 'Buzz', giving a modern style to it.
By applying text features like shadowing, glows, and font size and manipulation to look a certain way the text looks more readable and professional to the reader, also by layers that make the editing of the text alot easier to do rather than in the premilinary with large text boxes.
The only thing that I didnt use on the main task contents page was the synergy of media platforms, the use of a website on the premilinary task is a choice that may advertise the website rather than the contents of the actual magazine, I chose to keep the synergy of E-media to the double page spread, so that the website isnt advertised when I didn't think it was relevant to what is in the magazine itself.
The double page spread above is my main task product, something that I didnt create as part of the premilinary task, so being thrown straight into designing something without having any knowledge or practice of the product was something that made the spread a harder task to complete. However, I feel that with constant learning of Photoshop effects like warping text to fit around images, gutters created by changing text box sizes with rulers that seperate the page into sections so it was much easier to create borders, space and guttering of the body text. The premilinary of the double page spread would probably be equally as unprofessional and unclear to the audience that is targeted as the contents and cover, so with the spread, I used the house colours, story that was relevant to the cover advertising and something that the target audience (age and style) could relate to and understand completely. I also looked and analysed typical magazine double page spreads on Google, the conventions used, such as borders, headline, kicker, drop caps, side-bar, images, captions, pull quotes etc, these were applied to the main task and I felt that the double page looked like it could appear in a real magazine, using page numbers also helped link the contents page to the spread.
For the double page spread, I wrote a draft article, using my english skills too to make the story a success, keeping the audience interested, constantly reminding yourself that the story is aimed at the 'Indie' readers that will be attracted to the magazine due to the main features which included this article. The skills development during this project were definately due to the learning of conventions, using Photoshop to its potential and having more knowledge on what these products should look like and appear to get a target audience.
The overall development of research for my premilinary task to my main task was extremely different, firstly, I didn't research and question a random selection of people who could be interested in my 'ENCM' mag, contrasted with the main task as I set up a specific questionnaire on SurveyMonkey, to properly plan my main task by knowing my audience.
A good account of the products. What about planning and research approaches. Did they evolve from the prelim task to the main task?
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