Prelim and Main Task

Evaluation

The following is a look back through the work I have do on my main task throughout the last few weeks. I shall go over the skills I have learnt and evaluate my designs and see how I can improve this type of work in the future. This shall be done by reviewing what ways does my media product use as well as develop the different types of forms and conventions of real media products?

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product develops the traditional conventions of similar products through is by using the same format that they use in their designs, but doing it in my own style. For my design I looked through a pre-existing magazine and used that particular layout for mine but made changes to make it my own design. examples of these changes would be changing the themes and dialogue presented in the magazine to a topic which suited the pre-existing style but was not copying what I had read.

media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine represents the particular social group I had chosen for my product as being well read and sophisticated. This is shown to be true when viewing the simple but classical design of magazine though out it, showing that its readers are of high intelligence. therefore, my media product represents the particular social group, I chose for my magazine, is positive.

• Who would be the audience for my media product?

For this particular magazine, the target audience would range from young adults to middle age who are fans of classical music. I came to this conclusion when choosing my template for my magazine and found a posh magazine design and decided to adapt it. The magazine also appeals to fans of Dr Who, Quatermass or the Radiophonic Workshop in general.

• How did you attract/address my audience?

I was able to address my audience through the use of a survey. this was used to ask my target customers what they would want in a Music Magazine. With this information, I was able to design my magazine based off of the results of the survey. A link to my survey is available on my blog. Using images from Dr Who, helped to peak the interest of fans of the show who may not have been interested in just a music magazine.

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

This experience of constructing my magazine has allowed me to advance my skills when it comes to the use of editing technologies. Before starting my Main Task, I was aware of Photoshop and I did have previous experience creating

covers and my own original artwork using these particular photo editing tools.

Having prior knowledge to use these tools has helped me during this task as it gave me a head start when it came to creating my magazine. It has also allowed me to advance my skills, introducing me to tools like lasso and crop, which has greatly improved my projects i am currently working on out side of school.

• Looking back at my preliminary task, what do I feel I have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Too find out what progress I had made between my Preliminary task and my Main Task, I decided to place my final product for the both Tasks and compare

them, seeing what has improved and what needs to be worked on.
Original Cover (final cover variant 1)

(Limited Edition cover)

When viewing the different tasks, it is clear that I have made progress when it comes to editing photos. An example of this would be using and editing my own photos rather than using pre-edited images, which doesn't help when it comes to advancing my editing skills. additionally the prelim task appears to have a more childish design, while the main task is more sophisticated. With the final design I had a theme in mind which helped me know what I wanted my cover to look like. It was quite difficult to figure out what I wished for my Magazine being not a fan of Music. By giving it a theme that relates to something I do like, I.E, Dr Who, the cover was defiantly stronger. Furthermore, when it came to models and photos, I had more of an idea of what sort of photos to take, being recreations of existing photos. The original lacked a direction in terms of design.
I kept parts of the original cover such as the title and the black background so the work which had been done on it had not gone to waste. Furthermore on the first variant cover, I used one of the photos which was from the original contents page.

For the final design I made sure that the theme remained the same so that the cover, contents and double page spread looked like they came from the same magazine.