Evaluation Question Seven

Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?








Do i really need to answer this? The comparision between my two magazines is non-existant. On the left we have amatuer work with no overall plan, no fancy ideas, not even straight text! Where as on the right we have a masterpeice that has 'Oh yes' written all over it.

My prelminary work doesn't even follow any conventions other then the very poor masthead. The photo quality was poor, the editing was poor, the design was poor and it just looks so dull. The text varies from one sentance to the other, the images arn't in line nor in a correct size.

The improvement from that to my current work is vast, you can clearly see that my work has become far better. The editing is good, the design is great, the genious new ideas, it all adds up to one great package. The preliminary taught me exactlly what not to do in a magazine but this is wear my first draught suffered from. Instead of doing too little like i did before i then went and did too much and the first draught just too crowded, this time i have found a good space between the two. The preliminary also taught me that time, patience and detail are everything. Although you can't see it that well my pug has a huge amount of detail in it, as well as the background to my double page spread. The preliminary was a good test run and taught me what i shouldn't do and yes i did learn from it. Apart from obviously learning more about Photoshop, i have learnt more about proffesional looks, how to anaylse and use bits of design from just about anything (see question 6 step 4), how to make things look eye catching, how to appeal to a specific type of reader and flood them with everything they want, could want and what i'll force them to want.

Although there is one major difference between why the magazines have certain things. I mean i wouldn't add on skulls, make it all dark and drab if i was trying to appeal to school kids like i did in my prelimary because thats not what they want, so the preliminary has definitly taught me to research into my target audience and find out every little thing about what appeals to them, in this case it did happen to be skulls and dark colours due to this being about Thrash Metal.

Evaluation Question Six

Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Thorought the design process of this product i have used various peices of technologies and have been let down by a certain area of them. The first stage of the magazine's design was to go out and take some pictures of my models, backgrounds and anything else i required - I used my digital camera for most of these but it soon ran out of battery, so my phone stepped in to the fill the seat and worked great. I had trouble with lighting at times, so a few of the main pictures i was going to use ended up being cut up and only have little snippets of them being used. Other then that the picture taking process was without incident.

The next process was to put this pictures on a computer and start on the main design processes for the magazine. We were given time to use 'Photoshop' on Microsoft Macs most of the time but this soon was a complete let down as the photoshop didn't have half the features mine did at home, so doing what i wanted to do was rather hard most of the time - especially when instead of saving my work, photoshop decided to crash and forget it all. My working Photoshop with many more features proved hard to work with as for some reason all my colours turn out looking like sand (problem with my computer) so that re-mastering process took a while to fine tune afterwards but other then that Photoshop was fine and i learnt many skills and tricks with it. The demonstraight how i have constructed my pages, i will show you how my contents page got from zero to hero.

Step 1

First of all; a blank page. I look at my planned designs and see what one/what parts of each would be suited now i have this overall idea in my head. I quickly wrote out what my contents page would include, the title and draw the two boxes at the bottom, read when they get their content.




Step 2

I then tidied up the text and added in the content for the two boxes at the bottom. The pictures where simply cut out from the ones i had taken earlier and reduced in size or simply had the undeed parts taken away (the camo background was not reducded, anything over the size of the box was deleted) For the 'Mad Mad Mass' stories, the background was made from the 'Clouds Filter' tool. I did experiment with 'Difference Clouds' and adding bit of 'Gaussion Blur' but i realised that the simple clouds i already had where fine. What i did acquire from the Difference clouds and Gaussion blur was the line down the middle, by mistake i made the entire page have the clouds effect, but i saw what a good effect it had made i decided to keep a small part of the line which then became the content seperater you now see. I then added in the early beginnings of the 'Editor Speaks' area.



Step 3

I then added in the rest for the Editor's section including a reduced picture. I then used the layer style 'Stroke' to add a small border around the picture. I also polished off most of text, made sure it was spelt correctly and added in more layer effects - mainly drop shadows and bevels. I also added a small line over the Issue date for more aesthetics. At this point i saw that major parts of the page where still empty but i didn't want to move my design around. After a red bull and some thinking i came up with a plan.



Step 4

I was wandering around my looking for inspiration and nothing really hit me untill i saw book my dad had on the shelf. It was a book on the pacific front in world ward two, the Imperial Japaneese flag was the background of the front cover and it worked so well. I decided i would use this, so i instantly jumped on the computer and had 4 attempts at trying to make the shape on a new layer with the Polygonic lasso tool and failed misrebly. So i downloaded a shape that looked like it and put it as the background of the front page (Custom shape tool and Opacitiy changes). I tried having the colour of it as a dark red since thats what had worked so well on the front cover of the book and since my magazine uses dark red alot but it blended in the with text too much. I still had too much empty space in parts of my page. I tried adding a image in but no matter how big or small it was or were i placed it, it was too out of place untill i remembered what i did with the background. I changed the opacity right down and it looked pretty good but was still off. I messed around with the blending changers and found that 'Luminosity' worked wonders. I had forgotten to move the layer down and it was over my 'Editor speaks' section, but i thought it looked quite good. After asking a few people who fitted my target audience they told me that it was fine and looked good so i continued to use it - as well as the fact it looks like the cover of a album that my target audience likes.



Step 5

Now there was just one problem left, empty space in the top right corner. At this stage i realised i didn't have a pug but putting one on would make it too ugly, so i had a good plan - masking tape. I decided that instead of just having the usual bland and boring pug i would make it as if someone had come along and left the editor a note (a bit of suttle advertising in the end) I've not seen a magazine that has had something that looks like masking tape on it before so we're already ahead on originality, then instead of just writting 'New Merchandise in the Store!' and spoiling the whole effect, i added in 'CJ, Don't forget to talk about the new merchandise - Merch Dept'. Placed right next to the 'Editor Speaks' section it works at; Advertising, Focus pulling and making the magazine seem more 'One to One' instead of being mass produced for everyone.

Evaluation Question Five

Q5: How did you attract / address your audience?

To attract my target audience i included everything that would be interested in as well as including everything related to them. My double page spread is designed to be worn down and destroyed (General metal) whilst my front page is black and dark red (More extreme metal). The model on the front cover is exactlly what you'd expect from a metal guitar and is dressed in black accordinly, this appeals to the audience directly since they either want to be like him, may already be like him or because he looks like a member from their favourate metal band. The use of wording in the magazine also directly appeals to the audience; since metal doesn't pull any punches when it comes to their fast and fruious gigs and their fast and furious lifestyles. My magazine does have swearing in it dotted around the place such as "It's F@!#ing Whiplash!" because metalheads just straight don't care whether they offend people or not, they just want to rock - so the fact this magazine is using their own sort of language back at them would directlly interest them since they'd see this magazine and realise that it's just like them, from the clothes the model is using on the front, to the content and use of language.

I've just realised that parts of my magazine do look like things my target audience have/want. My front page for example:


Sort of looks like it. I'm included in this target audience and have that shirt, so it's pretty obvious that small peices like this can and have worked at reminding audiences of bands that could be in the magazine. If someone does see that issue number, they wont instantly go 'Hey that looks like Metallica! They must be in this issue!' but they will unknowingly reckognise it and be drawn in by it.

Evaluation Question Four

Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for my media product would be the previously described Metal Head community; i already have a example of what this type of group of people would be like in terms of buying potential, spending allowance, loyality, interests etc Here and Here. This group of 18 - 30, middle class people would definantly be my audience for Whiplash since if you like one genre of metal your pretty much going to like 75% of the rest, including sub-genres - so they are always going to buy my product out of interest.

Evaluation: Question Three

Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The choice of publisher is important for a sucessfull magazine. Wheither it be the avaliable funds for advertising, nearby printing presses or simply the ability to publish the magazine well - whatever the choice, it is crucial it is the right one. Various publishers could take on my magazine for various reasons;

Something different - The publisher wants to expand into new areas of the industry, taking on my magazine would be the first step into conquering Metal magazine publishing:

IPC Media
ACP Magazines
Heinrich Bauer Verlag

Expand influence - The publisher wants to simply increase their grasp on the metal magazine publshing industry. Possibly even making the two magazines Rivals to inspire compition, increased sales due to rivalry and more:

Future Publishing
Springer Publishing
Dennis Publishing

I did not want to add in any of the major players of publishing such as IPC Media since they already publish well respected and well selling magazines, they would not need to either expand their grasp on the industry, whoever they could possibly be persauded to quickly snap up and publish my magazine Whiplash since this would cut off their competitors and stop them from gaining and advantage

Evaluation: Question Two

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups

My media product will directly represent and stand for a particular social group; the 'MetalHead' community. Usually between 18 - 30, these long haired, denim and leather wearing, middle class people will be always be seen wearing a t-shirt from a band they enjoy, although unlike other genres of music fashion, the only mandetory part is wearing a T-shirt since some people cannot grow their hair long. The images used for my product have partially keep to these rules with two of the models used dressed in a Denim shirt and jeans or simply all in black. Although this does not apply to all models since once again the dress code isn't manditory. The metal genre is associated with all kinds of satanism, death and various other wierd categories such as those, as such metal colours are black, red, grey and generally dark colours - my magazine uses all of them, as well as the 'grungey' type design of my second page showing how worn down and used the page is, much like how worn out and destroyed people are after going mental at a metal concert.

The models used in my magazine are middle class, white people which is what the majority of the metal community is, you don't have to be rich to rock out. The choice of equipment the models are using and the location of one of them shows the early beginnings of what a metal band has to go through (playing in a garage with very little equipment) since they can't afford studio time being from such a background.

Evaluation: Question One

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product sticks to the majority of magazine conventions such as a masthead and pug whilst not sticking to the conventions of them. To give a example; this is a usual magazine pug



A circle with some kind of offer/advertisement on the front page. This one happens to be positioned out of the way of the main focal point of the front page and is fairly small.




Whereas my pug is on the contents page - instantly breaking the common rule of it being on the frontpage. It is not a circle with a small amount of words, instead it is written as a personal note from someone to the editor slapped on afterwards to remind him to talk about the new merch. So it's less of a 'billboard' style advertising and more of a suttle approach. It's also not positioned right next to the main focus-pulling object of the page, since the pug itself is bright compared to it's surroundings it is in a great place to stand out. Other ways my front cover keeps with conventions yet develops them futher would be the slanted banner running across the bottom of my front page, just not at the completel buttom like most magazines. Mine is slightly high off the bottom of the page so i can add in more bands that are included in this magazine. Whilst this does make the magazine look somewhat odd, it fits in well since this issue of the magazine is about finding new bands, new genres, new...things - such as the colour, the choice of colour of my magazine is also relatively new. With the possible expection of the 'Revolver' front page that i anaylsed, no other magazine uses a completely dark and mysterious colour scheme such as mine. Sure 'Revolver' is dark as well but it's not completely dark, the picture of the band frontman in the middle of the others wears a white shirt, making him and everything around him the focus pull of the magazine where as mine is dressed in dark clothes as well. He does blend into the background somewhat but not enough for him to completely disappear, this could appeal to peoples sense of curiousity if they don't completely see him at first glance. Anyway, due my model being partly unseen and all the objects/text around him standing out, this makes my magazine work really effectively at challanging conventions and making it work.

The effect of these new ideas for the rules that magazines stick to make out my magazine to be something different in every form, not just what it in includes. If all magazines on a shop's shelf look the same since they all keep to conventions, customers will caught a glimpse of this magazine and instantly be curious about the contents since it's so unique.