Evaluation

Planning Evaluation (Magazine)

In my magazine assignment, I had to respond to a brief by my clients. In order to accomplish the requirements set by the Ash brief, I had to analyse the it to know every detail. Here is the brief, which I had to work to;   

The main constraints in a brief are getting to a target audience, using specific formats, working to tight deadlines and managing the content. I looked at these constraints and I got the following answers from the brief. The primary target audience, to which I had to produce my magazine, were students from university campuses and colleges, which include the age group of 16 to 21 years old. The secondary target audience were parents and the local community in the area.  The format that I needed to use for my client, was PDF and PSD format.  PSD stands for Photoshop document and PDF stands for portable document format. In addition, the medium product will be printed out on 100% recycled to help reduce the budget. The deadline for the student magazine is the 8^th April, In order to meet this deadline I need to construct a production schedule to manage my time. 

To get an idea of the sort of content which students are interested in, I generated a mind map and mood board to help me get a broad range of ideas put into the content.  From these mind maps and mood boards, I took some of the subjects and created a questionnaire for my market research.  I handed out some questionnaires to students about the text, images, content, colours, themes & motives.  The feedback I received was really useful because it determined what I was going to put into my magazine and it justified the reasons for the choices that I made for my magazine.

Here are the results from my questionnaires;

-          The results from my colour survey were red, blue and yellow

-          The results from my themes were arts & creative and retro

-          The results from my motives were to Entertain people

-          From the results, the most interesting aspect of a magazine were the images

-          From the last of the results, the most interesting images were landscape images and Arts & Creative Images

I started to experiment with some techniques in Photoshop to help me explore new ways to make my magazine more interesting. Here is a mock-up of an idea which I included in my Pitch Power Point;

I had completed all my research and experimental ‘photo shop’ techniques which I’m going to use for my final product.  From this point, I started to create my pitch. When I did my PowerPoint presentation to my clients, I had to give them an overview of my interpretation of the brief.  For my first slide, I had to give a clear view of what I had to create for the brief. The other things which I needed to tell them about my idea, were the objectives of the brief, to reassure them that I knew what they wanted for their final, end product. These things were the target audience, the legal & ethical issues and the advantages of my magazine over other publications.

The Power point presentation is below;

The first thing that I needed to explain to my clients was the main objective of the magazine. I started off by outlining the three final products which needed to be completed. The three products were the front cover, the contents page and the double-spread page.  After I had done that, I explained the constraints behind the magazine. The main constraint for my magazine was the target audience and in my pitch, I explained that the primary target audience were students between the ages of 16 and 21. These students went to college and were on university campuses.  The secondary target audience were the local communities, which are by the south coast in the two counties of Hampshire and West Sussex.  Also, the student’s parents were also part of the secondary target audience. After I had explained the main constraints for my magazine, I explained the research behind my idea.  To show the client where I started my research, I included a mood board and a mind map. This is evidence which shows that I have gone and explored many different topics which students like. The rest of my presentation was about the market research.  Below is all the market research which I undertook.

To know which topic the students favoured the most, I needed to undertake some market research. I did some market research by handing surveys to students in my class. This was a very helpful start as it served as a good, reliable, primary research point on each topic. The results confirmed that travel and culture were the most favourable subjects. These were the subjects that I chose for my articles.  

For my market research, I asked a group of students what they thought certain aspects of the magazine should and should not have. There were four graphs which helped me to decide on the final choices for my magazine.

In this graph, I did some primary research about the colours to use in my magazine and the top three colours that came back from the research were red, blue and white. These ‘top three’ colours will be the priority when creating the layout for my magazine.  I was surprised by these results because I thought green, or yellow, would get higher results but, obviously this is not the case when looking at the results.

In the graph above, I asked a question around what the theme of the magazine should be about.  I did this because I could then determine which theme would best suit my magazine. The most favoured theme was the Arts & Creative theme and I will use this in my magazine. I will look at some Art & Creative magazines to get an idea of the best content to put in and the best layout to use. The second highest result was retro, so I will combine the two together and then analyse some magazines from the two different themes. This is so that I can pick certain techniques used, develop them into my own style and still make sure that it appeals to the students.

In the graph above, I picked five motives and then researched which ones were more likely to influence my potential readers. The highest motive from the feedback was to ‘entertain’. So, I will adapt this to the magazine by making sure that the articles I include are funny and entertaining to read. If I can get this spot on, this will make people want to share these entertaining stories with friends and families and this will increase my potential circulation.

In this graph, I wanted to see which aspects of the magazine people cared about the most when they read  magazines and surprisingly it was Images. I thought people would be more interested in the text which is presented, because it can affect the mood in which people read the article. For example, small printed text can put off people reading the magazine, because they may have to work too hard to see what is being said. I will need to generate some more research into the use of images, in order to make sure that I know what images

people like.  Below are the results for the images;

In the graph above, the highest results were Landscape Image and Art & Creative Images. Out of the two I’ve decided to focus on Landscape, because I felt that it suits the motives and themes better.

Analysing Magazines

Secondary Research

I have researched a magazine called ‘Source’ which is a local, Brighton magazine done on a A5 size booklet.  Some of things which I found out about the themes are that it has a very creative, retro style. For example, below is a hippies’ retro style image, captured from the 50’s. I like this image a lot because it uses simple palette colours to stand out. This works because it fits with the 1960’s theme. I can tell this a creative, captured image from the 60’s, because the first thing that catches my eye is the use of colourful, happy flowers and this indicates ‘hippies’ to me.

Another clue which backs this ups is that on page 30, there is an image from the Brighton Rock Movie.  This suggests that the mood of the magazine is a very sociable and full of activity. One last clue to support this is that all the advertisements are for concerts and festivals. In this magazine, they use simple image techniques to manipulate the original image and create a style for the magazine. The main style which I noticed was the use of clever, spotty patterns which have been put on top of the magazine.  Here are some of the images below;

Another Clue which suggests this is that on page 30 their is an image from the Brighton Rock Movie.  This suggests that the mood of  the magazine is a very sociable magazine. One last clue to support this is that all the advertisement is for concerts and festivals. In this magazine, they use simple image techniques  to manipulate the image and create a style for the magazine. The main style which I noticed was this clever spotty pattern which has been put on top of the magazine.  

This is what I explained in my PowerPoint presentation and after I had covered all of my research, I moved on to the last few things, which were the legal and ethical considerations.  The legal and ethical issues needed to be considered so that my magazine doesn’t get any complaints, get a bad reputation, or end up in a lawsuit of some sort. The legal and ethical issues were about things that I shouldn’t include in my magazine, in order tp avoid going to court or facing a heavy fine. Some of the key legal and ethical topics to avoid are racism, ageism, discrimination and copyright infringement.

To prevent copyright infringement of images, I have managed to use some of my own archive images, which I have taken myself and used.  Some of the other images

I felt my PowerPoint went well and that I delivered the content of my magazine clearly and confidently to my clients. If I was to improve my power point presentation, I would have given more examples of my text and layout.

1.     I chose a retro style font for my title because many of the participants who took part in my market research survey said they would want a retro font for the front of the magazine.

2.  For my image manipulation, I used the blur tool and paint gradient bucket. These were very simple tools used for

3.  I got some splatter brushes off the internet and used it for my front cover. I liked this because this gave an arts & creative look.

Client Feedback

I got Simon to look at my work.  Simon said that the front cover layout was good and that the manipulated image gave the magazine a nice arts & creative effect. On a critical note, he said that the font used on the front cover could be improved because the main title wasn’t standing out enough. Also, Simon didn’t like the font type which I used for my magazine even though my market research participants liked this font style. This meant that I had to decide whether go with Simon’s viewpoint, based on all of his experience, and ignore that fact that he was older than my target audience, or go with the feedback that I got from the target audience itself. The next piece Simon had a look at was my Double-Spread page. He liked the content and thought the design was good. However, Simon didn’t like the font that I used.  Another thing was that he said that it needed to look like more of a notice board because the images looked like they were floating.  The last piece of work Simon looked at was my contents page. Simon didn’t like my contents page that much because he felt that the font would be hard to read at first glance.  Also, there was a lack of effects to the photos and the background, which could have been done more creatively to make it look more interesting.

                                                                      

 Student Class Feedback

The class gave me a mixture of good and bad feedback.  My average rating for my front cover, contents page and double-spread page was 8 out of 10. This is a good rating and I’m pleased with this rating. The good things which were mentioned about my front cover were that there was good use of images and that the colours used were really good.  Some of the bad things that were mentioned were about my front cover and fact that George wasn’t smiling in the photo.  I took these comments into consideration and I decided that if I had time to change the front cover, then I would retake the photo of the student and make sure he was smiling! The idea of my front cover images was to show the student thinking about holidays and, as you can see in the manipulated image, it is a skiing holiday. My next piece of feedback was for my contents page. The average rating for my contents page was a 7 out of 10. The feedback I got for my contents page was quite negative because a lot of the students within the class found it hard to read the information and this caused a lot of frustration for them. I totally agree with the students and I will improve this because I have enough time to do so. The final piece of feedback I got was about my double page. The average rating for my double page was 8 out of 10. The positive feedback from the students was that the design was good, but that the font wasn’t because it didn’t suit the target audience. Another bit of feedback was that it didn’t look like it was pinned up on anything.  To improve my double-spread page I will put a cork –screw texture in the background to make it look better.

Anonymous Students

When I got my feedback off students in my class, I felt that they were being positively biased towards my work and this didn’t help me to improve my work. So, to get more accurate feedback from students, I got Harry to hand out my questionnaires to another class. The feedback I got back was quite harsh and this was good because it really told me what students actually thought of it. This feedback was good because it showed me that there were a number of areas that needed improving. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any improvement suggestions which annoyed me. A lot of the negative feedback was about my front cover and my double-page spread. The negative feedback said that there was too much on the page at once and it all got a bit confusing. Another negative was that the font didn’t suit the target audience and its purpose.  

I found this feedback a bit irritating, because it contradicted my initial market research and actually didn’t help me because all the supportive evidence of chosen colours, layout and font style didn’t seem to appeal to the student. In future, I will do my market research inside and outside of the class so that I get a broader, unbiased research data that I can actually use to produce a better final end product.

My response to all the feedback 

My response to the feedback was to mainly change the font. I did this by manipulating it to create a better font style.  Another thing I did was to mak it more realistic by adding better effects.  Here is what I did;

Doing a comparison between my magazine and the Brighton magazine, ‘Source’ surprised me in that it showed me how hard it is to make a good magazine. Trying to develop my own technique that a majority of students like is difficult because my resources and my time are limited. Also, I realised that I wasn’t going to please everyone because everyone likes different things. I liked the technique that I used for my double page spread, but comparing it to the techniques they use in ‘Source’, it’s a bit naff. Some of the advantages they have over me are that they have thought deeply about the typography, whereas I focused too much on the design aspects. I now understand that the font has such a big impact on the final product. If I am going to  re did the task again, I would spend more time on the typography and the composition.  Another advantage that ‘Source’ is that they have a lot more time to design their magazine and they are a professional magazine. I only had three weeks to make a magazine and I have no experience of doing so! If I had more time, I would have spent it on getting reliable market research to help me produce a better product for the students. 

In conclusion, in producing this magazine project I have felt that I have progressed well in developing my skills and knowledge in magazine editing. Some of the skills which have helped me with this task are my Photoshop skills. I have felt that these skills have also developed because I have learnt some new techniques from Harry’s workshop lessons. Harry’s workshop lessons have been very useful because it has helped me to make my magazine stand out better.