My practice 'College' magazine evaluation

Evaluation

What went well with the photography? What could have been better? 

Overall my photographs were well suited for the magazine cover and contents page as the photos included in both landscape and portrait photos with a vary of depth, some focused on just one person whereas others captured a larger area such as the one included in the contents page which captures part of the college through the alleyway. Despite having a variety of photo styles, we did not have a vast amount of photos to work with and perhaps at the time should have taken more so we had a wider choice when producing the magazine. Therefore, the photography itsself went well and so did the manipulation of photographs for the magazine but I do not believe we took a large enough amount of photographs, this meaning that we were somewhat 'lucky' in the production that the photos were suitable and useable for the magazine.
 
What did you learn about using the software?
 
My front cover and contents page were created souly in Adobe's Photoshop which I have used previously so I knew what a majority of the effects and tools could be used for however I did learn from the production of my magazine the usefullness of tools such as the 'magic eraser' tool to remove backgrounds. On top of this, the blending options tools were also very effective for the production of my magazine as they allowed me to change the colour of text and the opacity of images quickly so it was easy for me to see which colours worked best and looked suitable for the magazine; the accesability of these tools also made it easy for the magazine colours to be consistent and so we can see blue and white text along side dakrened images (edited using the brightness and contrast feature) throughout my work as the bright text contrasts well against darkened images. In summary of this, my project came out as I expected and I was able to use all the needed tools to produce my magazine.

What do you think of what was produced?

The weakness I see in my final product is that although it is consistent, this could be seen by some of my audience as boring and so may want to see a variation of colours instead of consistent blue and white text throughout if it were to be a full magazine. However I believe the project did come out as I had planned, the pages are not sparse-looking and included the necessary information needed. My magazine includes a house-style of colours and incorporates various image types well using both portrait and landscape views succesfully.

What do others think of what is produced?
 
'The photography in your photos is very well done and you have made great use of photoshop to give the cover and contents page a very unique and slightly moody style. The colours and syle are consitant in both pieces and they fit the magazine very well. The reseach you have done looks very useful for creating other magazine covers.' - Adam Pluck, classmate.

Why did you choose to do what you did and how much of an effect did the audience research have?

I chose to do what I did from my audience research and from my own personal preference. As the magazine is aimed at college students aged 16-18 I fit the criteria and so included what I felt was needed in magazine to make me buy it and looked at my audience research which mainly requested an informal magazine with a variety of articles about both college and non-college related subject. I also included common desires of people in this age range. As a 16-18 age group's main desire is money and getting what they want, I included an article about an easy to way to make money with the magazine; by writing articles for it and being paid royalty or comission if the article becomes published.

I also chose to do what I did with reference to the front cover as graphic design is a hobby of mine so I wanted to expand my knowledge using a wide variety of the available tools in Photoshop and see what the final product would look like. I had a plan from my research of looking at other college magazines and so included those as well as including my own ideas. The ideas I took from research are effects such as having the word 'College' on the front cover behind a subject in the photo - in my case the silhouette. I incorporated my own ideas such as using a silhouette from a completely different photo and adapting it to a new photo through the use of beldning techniques and an opacity change.

In summary of this, the audience research I conducted played a strong role in the production of my magazine as I included what people asked for but as well as this included what I felt was necessary if the magazine was to be published and distributed, this despite giving me a bias view leads me to believe the magazine would be a success if produced.

Below I have included an image of both my magazine cover and the contents page I produced in Photoshop.