Evaluation

What was the purpose of the research? What did you learn during the research stage?

I did this research to give me knowledge on how magazines appeal to specific types of audiences and how to identify the type of person who is likely to read the magazine. Also, this research showed me examples of techniques on how to attract a potential reader to the magazine just by the cover and how some of those techniques can be gender specific (colour, size of masthead etc.)

What was the purpose of Photoshop and InDesign to produce your front cover and contents page?

Photoshop and InDesign are relatively simple ways of getting the picture and layout you want accurately. I used Photoshop to make a collage of  techniques used on front covers which was a very efficient way of doing research. Also it is very easy to position everything you want on both applications. Photoshop was used for the front cover and InDesign was used for the contents page, and it had guidelines so you can position images and text exactly where it should go.

What did you learn about new digital technologies during the project? (Be specific, name tools etc.)

This was the first time I had used InDesign so it was useful to learn how to cut images out of their background and position the in proportion to the surrounding text. I was also very inexperienced on Photoshop as well and realised how easy it is to modify an image, cut parts into other images and more.

Set yourself three targets that would help you improve when approaching your main task.

• Analise fonts and colours of text in magazines more.
• Do all the research I did previously for the music magazine but repeat for the double page spread to get a good idea of how each section of a magazine works.
• Spend more time working on the front cover (getting the right picture and getting text positioning spot on.)