for college

1. Evaluation
James

2. Research
• The strengths of my research were, I got to see what worked with already existing
products and how I could apply those aspects to my magazine.
• I looked at the best examples of the double pages as well, for a good idea of what
size and font the text should be and where about the text would be placed, like if it
should be in columns or if they should be in separate paragraphs.
• Looking for photos that fit well in pages was difficult while doing research, since all
of the other existing products used photos they took specifically for a page, and
they had a lot of different versions of the same photo, since a lot of bigger
companies tend to take upwards of 100 of the same photo, which I didn’t plan on
doing when I started planning out.
• Something else I found in research was what kind of picture works best for the
front cover, things like the lighting what should be in the centre of the photo, and
where about the the logo should be along with al the other texts, plus any photos I
want to overlay the main one on the cover. Everything in my research I looked at
help me figure this out.

3. Planning
• While planning i looked at a lot of what I saw during the research and tried to put
it to my own product while planning the layout and double pages.
• I started taking photos a few days before I got to this planning section since I
already had some ideas on what i wanted to do. I did end up scrapping most of
them and just using one I took at a concert, which was fitting for a music magazine
and something I did see while doing my research.
• One of the biggest issues with my planning was I planned too much and was too
ambitious with what I wanted to do so I had to change a lot of the planning here.
One thing I had to change for example was how many pages I was going to have
and how many artists I was going to feature it, I had to trim it down to two artists
instead of the 5 artists I had planned on including.
• When I was planning out the page design and layout I wanted to try and do
something different and unique with them, which turned out to be difficult while I
was actually making the magazine. Which is another example of me being too
ambitious while planning.
• I looked back on the planning and saw how I could change it and kind of ‘dumb it
down’ to make making the final product less time consuming and a bit easier.
• The planning for the front page went well and I could follow that through all the
way.

4. Time Management
• The time management was the strongest thing with this project. Since I knew it
wouldn’t take more then 2 or 3 lessons to make the front cover, it gave me more
time to figure out what I wanted to do with the double page.
• In my free time I came up with a few different ideas for what the double page look
like, since I didn’t want to waste any time in lessons trial and erroring which would
have been a waste of time.
• When I had the double page planned out in my mind, I one lesson doing an
experiment to see if it would work or not, since I was ahead of time I figured this
wouldn’t have been too much of a waste of time.
• After the experiment I went onto the production which by this point I had fully
planned out and wasn’t short on any time.
• With more time I could’ve cleaned up some of the images since some of them
were clearly cropped quickly around the edges. I also could’ve added more pages
as well, which would’ve meant I could’ve followed along with my planning easier.
• With more time I also could have gotten a better picture for the front page since
the one I chose was in kind of a rush and wasn’t really thought through too much.

5. Technical Qualities
My product
Existing products
The existing product has a lot more going on, on
the page. There’s a lot of different colored texts
the prominent ones being red and black since it
stands out against the white background.
My product has a more colorful background
which means I could only really stick with a
brighter color for the text, and some black in the
lighter areas.
Both the products have multiple things featured
on the cover, one taking up a large area of the
page and one smaller with less description.
The double pages are the most different,
while mine is more low-key and only has
two pictures, the existing product uses
brighter colors and more pictures, with
more text as well.
Since the existing product is about
games, it’s accepted to have screenshots
and descriptions for the game. Mine has
a more straight forward design with the
artists only talking about the one project.

6. Aesthetic Qualities
The front cover looks better then the double pages, since
there's more going on there, in terms of the colors and the text
as well, I think it’s just more appealing to look at.
When making the double pages I wanted to go with something
more simple and easy to look at, however while making that I
think I made it look too simple and basic, with not too much to
look at, while I have the pictures and text lined up well, there
isn’t much to go along with them, the background for example
could’ve been a lot brighter with not as much of a darker color.
The second half does look better then the first, since there's
more text it doesn’t leave as much space in between the
paragraphs like in the first half. If more pictures were used then
maybe it would balance out the color and the final product
wouldn’t look as dull as it ended up being.
The cover while having some issues looks a lot better then what
I thought it would, considering the type of picture I used,
however I just edited the photos and matched the color with
the background, and it ended up looking good, improving the
overall aesthetic.
I would change some of the text placement at the top since it
looks out of place and doesn’t match with the rest of the cover.

7. Audience Appeal
I appealed to my audience by making the product exclusively about music, since my primary audience
is music fans.
I think everything on the front cover is a good appeal to music fans, the image I used was a photo
taken at a concert, it features two artists that a lot of people know about, and details some of what
you can find inside the product, which is all music related.