Skills Development Evaluation Essay

Skills Development – Evaluation Essay

For my piece I had to create a music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread. In order for me to do this I had to use a range of digital technologies such as blogger to help create my product and use for research and planning.

I used blogger to place all my work and research and planning in order to help me with the final evaluation where I was asked a series of questions mostly about my work and how research and planning came to play. Using blogger also helped me understand media websites better and how to manipulate them for my work such as setting up surveys on my blog to get audience feedback or help with my research. I have also used Photoshop to help myself with the actual production of my music magazine as I edited the photos on that application to transform the way I wanted it to be. I also edited the image so it would look similar to the genre of my magazine. Photoshop also helped me create a layout for my product. Photoshop also allowed me to make my product look realistic and how I wanted it to look personally as it wouldn’t be as effective if I created it with paint or a photo college editor that you would find on google. Other tools I used were things such as word and publisher; they helped create my article for my double page spread. For my evaluation I used things such as Prezi and YouTube to help myself to answer my questions because it showed a wide range of digital technologies it helped me become more creative with my answers.

For my initial idea I wanted to do my genre on indie as I feel like that was an area I connected to the most and could be more flexible with however, I choose to go with the genre R’n’B it was difficult to do but I enjoyed the challenge because I wasn’t that close to the music genre itself.  I had the idea of using red, black and whites as my house colours. I kept that original idea until I decided nearer to the end of adding  purple to have more of the R’n’b vibe that it didn’t have before. I looked at other magazines to help create mine such as Q and NME who helped me decide on my house style. I also liked the use of the examples I looked at for both magazines that showed a female on the front cover to show the empowerment we now have.  My final product had a few similarities to my initial product but as I previously stated there was a few changes.  

Research and planning was a hard process full of many different ways that I did my research such as through looking at other magazines.  I did image collages for my target audience research for example, I collected a few images which I would believe my audience would like. I planned on doing the audience around my age so I could find it easy to do so.  I also did a focus group where I asked them what music they like, what they would like to see in magazines etc. This helped me know what people my age would expect to see in a magazine. Magazines that helped me throughout this process were NME and Q. Research and Planning helped me when doing the evaluation piece as often the questions related back to the research I did earlier on.  

Post-production is what happens after the product is produced whether I decided to change the entire thing or just small items. I used photoshop a lot for my actual product and after audiences feedbacks I used there guidance to help me change what needed to be changed. Such as advice as if the house style matched my chosen music genre. I also did several drafts and often just changed slight things such as fonts and colours. I had my first original draft which I had to completely change because the image hadn’t matched my genre of music and you wouldn't see that image on an R’ n’ B magazine.

I used conventions throughout my magazine to keep the realistic vibe that it actually is a music magazine and not in fact just an image I made on photoshop. If I didn’t use any conventions it would of not looked realistic to my audience and wouldn’t be effective in getting their attention. I used things such as plugs, to real the audience in with a free item as that is a convention that often helps with the purchase of the magazine. I also used images on my front cover, contents page and double page spread to make the magazine seem more interesting because it wouldn’t keep my audience interested with just a bunch of text. I also used kickers on the front cover to catch my audience’s attention. I also used the convention of my house theme throughout the magazine. I also used the convention of mastheads to show how it’s a magazine and how that’s a convention.