Evaluation of College Magazine.

Max Clarke

In what ways does you media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?Front Cover:- My front cover uses the conventions of real media products due to it using most, if not all, of the features of what goes into a professional front cover. From a skyline to cover line surrounding the main images. My magazine follows most of the features that make real media products so successful. However, it does challenge the conventions slightly within the main image due to the back ground of it being a brick wall. Professional and real magazine have more of a studio look with controlled lighting making them look more clear and sharp, and with my brick background, it does not follow the conventions of real magazines. It also challenges the codes and conventions of real media products due to it not having any images attached to the given cover lines, real media products try and give an insight by attaching an image relating to the cover line to give the readers more of an understanding as to what the article contains, and with my product not giving any images, it may repel the reader from buying it due to there being more text that imagery.

Contents Page:- The contents page I produced Challenges the conventions massively, due to there not being that much colour and it looking extremely plain. This will most certainly put off the audience due to the lack of colour looking very dull, and may give the audience the impression that the rest of the magazine will be the same. Also, the images I included look like they all share the same importance, where as within real media products, one larger main image, bigger than all the rest, shows the most importance within the magazine and with mine having 3 images the same size, may confuse the audience and once again, put them off from buying this issue.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction of your media product?

The 2 software's I used to produce my contents page and front cover of my college magazine were Photoshop and QuarkXPress. These 2 software’s both required me to import images and manipulate text throughout. Photoshop was more straight forward due to the layout of the software being quite plain and simple, and made very easy to understand throughout production. Photoshop consisted of layer management and making sure not to interrupt with the main image and having no: other images, text, posters going over the main image at all. This was quite difficult due to the fact that you had to use a number of different tools to move an image and place text over the top, or anywhere on the page. To make the page look professional and the right size, we has to change to ‘International Paper’. This was to guarantee we had the right size paper to produce a professional and slick front cover.

QuarkXPress was a lot more difficult than Photoshop due to the lack of understanding the software gave us. It was quite difficult for me personally to get as much detail as possible onto my contents page due to their software having a lot of restrictions as to where you can place text and images onto it. Where a Photoshop was quite free and a lot more smoother. Within Quark to manipulate text and put images into it, we had to have a double page layout. This made things quite confusing for me because at first I was quite concerned as to why we needed to have a blank page constantly there, but after a few sessions I learned that it was quite important in the production of the contents page production.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of both products and your use of new media technologies?Strengths:- Throughout the production of my media products, I was very adamant on trying to include as much professionalism as I could, using features that were very important in the production of both my front cover and my content page. Within the production using the new media technologies I was very confident in using Photoshop a lot more due to me having quite a good understanding of that software straight off the bat and having a small amount of past experience with the software also. I was confident in my ability using this software due to me wanting to include everything needed within a college magazine front cover. Also, I was set out to produce a front cover to the best of my ability and show what I could do using the new technologies.

Weaknesses:- One of the main weaknesses during the production of my media products, was the confidence producing my contents page, due to me having no familiarity with the software, I was pretty useless within the first effort of the contents page due to my lack of understanding of the Quark software and a lack of effort to try and improve my skills within the software to produce a great piece of media product instead of a half effort contents page which has no connotation to the front cover due to them being a lot different calibre and effort behind them.