Darran's AS Coursework: 2015

Sunday 15 March 2015

Evaluation Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what have you learnt in the progression from it to the full project?

Looking back at my preliminary task of making my college magazine, I have learnt a variation of techniques to make my final product stand out. moreover, my knowledge on designing and editing has increased, which can be seen between my college magazine designs and my final product.
For the designing process, I learnt how to apply the typography of my magazine to the genre of my magazine, which would allow my product to stand out etc.

Above, are two different products that, which I designed, on the left is my college magazine from my preliminary task and on the right is my Final product, my music magazine. Between these two, you can clearly see the areas that I have improved in and the different changes which I have made.
for my college magazine, my sell lines are simple just like my music magazine, however they are less noticeable to the audiences eye and doesn't really give much off and does not really relate to each other as well, also the design motif I aimed for didn't really work compared to my front cover of my music magazine design, my college magazine masthead doesn't really stand out compared to my san serif, Bebas Neue font, which has a presence to it making it noticeable to a consumer. To make my masthead stand out I used different typography on my page and put different sell lines and important facts in different font sizes, however I used the same font on my college magazine and did not increase font size to make my most important sell line identifiable for my consumer.
On the other hand, I did have some knowledge on what to include props wise, to allow my audience and what type of picture I was supposed to use, which was a mid-shot as they are commonly used for magazine front cover's.

Evaluation Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation Question 5:How did you attract/address the audience?

Evaluation Question 4: Who would be the audience of your media product?

Evaluation Question 3:What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Tuesday 10 March 2015

Evaluation Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation Question 1:In What ways does your Media product use, develop/challenge forms and conventions of real media products

In my media products I have developed all the forms and conventions of real media products. In my work I have evidenced each of the forms and conventions in my my media products. For my Front cover magazine, I used 'The Source' magazine layout to help me create my hip-hop front cover magazine, I did this as I liked the layout of the front cover, as it was simple, but effective and also easy to replicate. Furthermore, this magazine below portrayed all the conventions needed on a front cover magazine such as the masthead which is should be bold and noticeable to the target audiences eye and also encodes hip-hop through the title, also conventions including sell lines, bar codes and the another important feature, a house style which makes the magazine more effective and makes it stand out. All of these conventions for a front cover magazine can be seen on my front cover magazine and shows a hip-hop theme through my house style colours of grey, red and white and a fourth colour of a dark-blue colour in my contents page and double page spread. Lastly, I used a mixture of a mid-shot and a close-up shot, in my front cover, which was influenced by the front cover below of wiz khalifa.

Above, is my second media product, my contents page. My contents page has a relevant structure to it, on the right side of my page, I have designed special tabs that go down of importance with the Cover story at the top of the Contents page, then Features, then Regulars and I added, non-related stories to my Music magazine so that I have a wider audience range to target. Furthermore I have challenged the common convention of having two contents pages,I chose to use one page for my contents page as I did not want to apply myself to the norm of this convention, I also thought that this made my contents page more effective. Furthermore on my contents page I have included all the necessary conventions except, the repetition of my slogan and the use of reviews on my page, also I included page numbers over my pictures which The Source did not do, I did this to make my magazine stand out.

Lastly, is my Third media product, My double page spread. Just like my other pages, I have included my masthead on the top and included all the other necessary conventions as you can see below, the exemplar, one side has a picture of the model and a meaningful quotation which links to the text, the other is information referring to the artist, their background and where they came from. In my design I have imitated a similar concept, as the one below is simple and is done in most magazine.Below is a image that I annotated showing the different and necessary conventions, that I have included into my double page spread.

To conclude,some of my media products challenge mainstream magazine's in many ways, first of all my contents page challenges the mainstream, through the structure. Mainstream magazines tend to have featured information on the left side of the page and is also spread out on two pages, however with my design, I have added all the content, that will be featuring in my magazine on one page