AS Preliminary Task

Evaluation task

Max Qayyum

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Masthead

Main image

Cover lines

Anchoring cover lines

Barcode

Footer

Some of the key features shared between both covers.

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My magazine covers uses the rule of thirds in a similar way to Red, by having the main image surrounded by cover lines (particularly on the left, making use of the Magic C) and masthead in the top left hand corner.

My magazine has a flash in the top right corner to emphasize the price and make it stand out, which Red doesn’t use, but many other magazines do. It works especially well as the colours used for the flash aren’t used anywhere else on the page.

Cover lines on both magazines overlap on to the main images and main cover lines anchor the image. Both images have neutral backgrounds and are medium close-ups. The person on the cover of my magazine was told to smile to look friendly, encouraging people to read the magazine.

Both my cover and the Red cover have footers and don’t have headers. The colour schemes are continuous on both covers, I have used a blue and white theme, whilst Red uses mostly pink and white.

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My contents page matches the house style introduced on the cover page with the blue and white colours and the same font.This was done to create a house style that would be recognisable. The Q contents page also has a recognisable house style, with the logo repeated and red and black frequently used.

In this Q contents page, page numbers and descriptions actually cover the images related to them, whereas for mine, I put the text near the related images and made the font larger. I feel like this worked well, although it also could have worked to have placed the page numbers over the images.

I chose to use white backgrounds behind the images so they would stand out and not look as though they were just randomly placed on the page. I tried to use a simple minimalist design, but it looks quite bland in comparison to the Q contents page displayed next to it.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learnt how to use layers in Photoshop shown (by hiding layers) here with the succession in stages of my design.

I have learnt how to use effects such as drop shadows to emphasize text.

I have learnt how to add colour swatches so that I can reuse colours instead of just finding similar ones. I now know how to use the toolbars in both Photoshop and InDesign and features such as the rotate tools and resize tools along with shapes and arrows. I have learnt how to resize images accurately in InDesign, and how to “place” a Photoshop file in InDesign. I can resize images without stretching them and know how to resize and manipulate text. I now know how to transfer pictures from a digital camera and import them into Photoshop and InDesign projects. I feel confident using both programs to create new projects and feel as though I have a good amount of knowledge with both.