Final Evaluation

For my Media Coursework I was tasked with creating 3 pages from a music magazine. The pages which I was asked to do where the front page, contents page and a double page spread. I would have to design the pages, take the photographs and also write the articles and content. For this project we were advised to work on our own, which I did. Before I did my main task, to create the magazine pages, I had to go through several stages. First I would have to complete a preliminary task, and then also conduct research into magazines. Once these were complete, I could then start creating the magazine, which a head full of knowledge on the subject.
Like I have mentioned in the introduction, prior to creating my actual magazine pages I need to conduct several pieces of research, in order to see what is successful in terms of sales etc for magazines. What genre would be best? These are all questions I needed to ask in order for my product to be the best. The first thing I did was to actually look at and analyse front covers to see if certain things were used on all magazines, and also to see what layouts etc magazines frequently used. From this I found out several things about the things front covers used in order to get people to look at there product and even draw them into buying it. The first thing I found was how colour schemes are used throughout front covers. Front covers also use large , bold text in order for the viewer to read what is in the magazine and the features, but also so they find it hard to miss the text. As well as researching front covers etc, I also conducted some market research to find out what sold best and what didn’t etc. From this I found Rock magazines sold the best, with Soul and Indie magazines coming quite a way behind. From this I decided to create a magazine based upon a Metal/Rock genre. I did this as for one, I knew they sold well, and I also knew a lot on the subject.

As well as research I also had to complete a preliminary task before I did the actual task in hand. For this task I had to create a front cover of a college magazine, which would show I could use the software needed to make the magazine pages. I did this with relative ease, as I already knew how to use the software, due to me using them for the past two years. I decided to call it College Times and then just have a picture of a student on the front cover, holding a media book. I did the latter as the issue featured AS results, of which Media did the best. I then placed several lines of text around the cover, with details of what was in the magazine. Now that I had finished the pre lim task and started my research, I could then start creating my magazine pages.
The first page I started on was my front cover. But before this I had to take my photographs for my magazine to do this I had to decided whether to take them at a live gig or in the studio. I had these options as I personally know the band so was permitted to photograph them in either. In the end I chose the live option. I attended the gig, which was in Leeds at a small pub. Luckily they had adequate lighting. But whilst there I encountered several problems. The main problem was how I was unable to photograph the bassist, due to lighting. Unfortunately the bassist was directly under a light, meaning any shot I took was just full of the lights colour, or under/over exposed. This also meant I couldn’t get a full shot of the whole band playing. But I was able to get good shots of the drummer, and the guitarist as well as the singer. After this I uploaded them onto the computer where I edited them accordingly.
Now I had my photos I could proceed with making my front cover. I decided to make the majority of my photos black and white, as I thought they looked much nicer. I sifted through my ten or so edited shots that were fit for use, and then picked the one I thought would look best. After this I added the text needed, and then the red blocks etc on to the front cover.