The document provides an evaluation of a school-based magazine created by the author. It discusses the target audience of students from years 7-13, representing different social groups through images, and challenging some conventions of real magazines in the design of the front cover and contents page to make it more exciting. The author also reflects on what went well in the planning and creation process and areas for improvement, such as conducting more research on the target audience.

1. School based magazine evaluation By Kamar Ali

2. Introduction In this presentation I will be evaluating my school based magazine and while doing it I will be answering questions that can help me raise my awareness on aspects of the magazine which means that I can go into the main task prepared for the task. I will be deconstructing my school based magazine and explain my though process on some main features which justify how I made my magaizne.

3. Target audience I have been making a school based magazine for Titus salt students that is about curriculum aspects of school that will help the students without boring them. It is specifically aimed at students across the board from the year groups 7-13 so this is my target audience, I wanted to make the magazine fun and exciting so that it will appeal to the target audience, so it doesn't look to boring but also not to childish. I wanted it to inform these students about what is happening around school and get them more involved with activities and the school itself so that it can benefit them academically and also keep the active and involved. I wanted to do this in a fun and creative way to reflect the contents of the magazine and to get students more involved, and not just with the magazine but with the school as well.

4. Social Groups In the school based magazine I wanted to represent the school as a school that has pupils of all ethnicities, girls and boys from middle class families; who look happy which shows that their enjoying their education. I also wanted to show the school environment as a positive and clean one that makes the school look more appealing. The main way in which the magazine represents social groups is through the images that are used in the magazine. In the magazine I tried to use images of loads of different people (all dressed smart) in different scenarios In the picture evaluation in my next post I will take a closer look at the images that I used within the magazine and I will also go into how each image represents Social groups and the school.

5. Conventions In a post earlier within the stages of the preliminary task I linked a document on the internet about the conventions of magazines, as well as producing a document that goes through some simple magazine conventions. My magazine follows most conventions like: A header across the top with large writing A main image which supports the main article A header to support the main image, that is fairly big, but not as big as the header Sometimes there is a featured section which goes over some of the main articles within the magazine There is a main magazine house style present and everything is ordered.

6. Conventions Cont. A date is present on the front cover There are usually images present on the contents page, but this is not always true The word ‘contents’ is usually present at the top of the contents page The contents page has a list of all articles in the magazine as well as page numbers for the readers convenience

7. How my magazine challenged conventions of real magazines Front Cover: The main magazine title is tilted, and therefore looks out of place, but still remains at the top of the page. This was done to give the magazine more of an exciting look rather than have it straight across of the top where it looks ‘boring’ The main image on the magazine front is ‘dominating’ the page unlike the title, and this was done for two reasons: To give the students an insight on the other images on the page to show that represent the school To give a contrast between the picture and the text as one is large and the other is small, giving the front cover more of a fun and exciting look. I was going to do it the other way round and have the main image dominate and the text small, but I felt this wouldn't look right and stray to far from the standard conventions of magazines.

8. How my magazine challenged conventions of real magazines Front Cover Cont. : I also included ‘side pictures’ supporting the ‘featured articles’ on the front cover; usually there is one dominant picture on the front cover, and in some cases there are other smaller ones in contrast to the dominant picture, but in the case of my school based magazine these images aren't to small compared to the main image, and in the case of the topmost one, it covers a part of the main image. This was done to show at first glance to the reader that the magazine has a variety of different articles in and represents a school that hosts a variety of different subjects/activities I think another convention my magazine front cover challenges is that there is quite a lot of free space present, and this was done to ‘show off’ the house style which is present in the background and this represents the magazine as fun and exciting and also makes it eye catching to the viewer.

9. How my magazine challenged conventions of real magazines Contents Page: I feel that my contents page follows the main conventions of a real magazine because it is presented well and is easy to navigate through as well as having a list of articles and page numbers and pictures around the page. I feel that in a sense the way my images are presented on the page to challenge the conventions in a way as they are all tilted and none of the images are straight or flat on the page. This was done for the same reason as the title. Also towards the end of the list of contents one of the articles has been moved slightly to the right as there is a image in the way, and I did this to present the images in a different way, which makes the magazine appeal more to the target audience as it looks more different and exciting.

10. House Style For the house style I decided to use the school colours in the colour scheme so that the magazine will look like a magazine from Titus salt school supporting the school colours while still appealing to the target audience. As you can see from the images below both the magazine front cover (right) and the school logo (left) have a similar colour scheme.

11. House Style Cont. As you can see, despite using the colours form the logo which are ‘boring’ in a sense; I still designed the overall front cover and contents page to represent the social group as fun and exciting while also making it eye catching to the target audience but also maintaining slight professionalism because I followed simple magazine conventions and maintained a certain house style that carries throughout the whole magazine.

12. What have I learned from technologies during the preliminary task During the preliminary task I learned a lot of skills technologically including how to use the software which we used to make the magazine. I also learned some skills based on how to run the blog and I also had to learn how to a website called ‘Slide share’ which I used to upload presentation such as this one. I learnt a lot of Photoshop skills during this tasks and I made a presentation on some of the basic skills I used while making the magazine and during the process of making the school based magazine I learned some other skills like adding effects, saving images as JPEG files, adding stroke, adding glow, colour over layers, adding artistic effects and other image manipulation tools. We had a tutorial lesson on how to use the blog and slide share as we would need this is we wanted to post presentations on the blog.

13. Preliminary Task Evaluation In the next few slides I will be looking at the Preliminary task and how I have gone through the task and what I have done well as what I could make improvements on to make the next task a lot better.

14. My Planning procedure In this task during the planning procedure I drew drafts for the magazines, and I also drew some drafts for the images for the magazine and in these I detailed what I wanted them to be like. I also did a presentation and a blog post on the conventions of magazine so that I can get a basic feel for what magazine should be like. I did some mind maps on the content of the magazines and what they would include as well as some of the article titles And I did a presentation on my initial ideas for my school based magazine and I explained what I wanted to do my school based magazine on.

15. What I did well: I feel that I did my drafts well and despite not being the best drawer they were detailed enough for other people understand what they were about and helped them gain an insight into what I wanted the picture to look like; this was also true for the magazine plans/drafts as it gave another person a good idea of what I wanted my magazine to look like, and I know that if I had given them drafts to someone else I would have got a end product similar to mine. I also feel that the creation of the product went well as I didn't run into any difficulties and made the product in time as well as to the best of my ability. I also believe that the my research into the conventions of magazines went well as after showing people the finished product I was told that it did represent a real magazine and did follow the main conventions set out by most magazines.

16. Improvements I am going to split this section up it into planning, construction and product evaluation; and I am going to explain how I could have done better in each section and I will also talk about what I am going to do to be more successful in the next task.

17. Planning: I feel that in the whole planning procedure I should have gotten more involved with my target audience as at the end the product is aimed at them and I feel that I could have done more research into the target audience as well as use tools like questionnaires in my research. This would help me make a product that would be right for my target audience as well as make the magazine more interesting to the target audience. I also feel that I should have looked at existing school based magazines specifically for researching conventions as I feel that I could have made my school based magazine look a lot more realistic if I had followed these conventions. I also feel that I should have been more organized across the board, and I that I should implement a gaunt chart into the next task as this will help me to be more organized.

18. Planning Cont. : I also think that I could have drawn various drafts for the magazine and made questionnaires about which draft the target audience and people in general feel are the best as then I can use constructive criticism to make the final product a lot better. I could also used the same system for the images that I will use in the magazine.

19. Construction: During the construction process I feel I could have improved on my skills with the software we were using so that I could have made the front cover and contents page to a higher quality. And I feel that if I had previous experiences with Photoshop or done more tutorial lessons with the software it could have made my final product a lot better. The only other factor I feel affected my construction was time, as I feel that if I had more time I could have made more tweaks and changes it could have made the finished product a lot better

20. Product evaluation: I feel that I could have improved well in this section and that once again I could have gotten my target audience involved, and this could have helped me made more improvements to the finished product. It also means that my finished product would have been better as different people would be giving me constructive criticism which means the if it doesn't look right, or if I have made some simple mistakes; they can be avoided and it will make the finished product look a lot more professional.

21. Changes I will make: Now I am going to state all the changes I am going to make for the next task so that I can make sure that the overall method is effective and that by using these methods I can ensure that my finished product will be to a professional standard that appeals to the target audience and in the end it would be ‘shop floor’ worthy. First I feel that one of the most important aspects of the task was organization and I feel that I wasn't as organized as I would like to be so I am going to use a Gaunt chart system, and I am going to make one right at the begging of the task so that I know when I have to finish each task and publish them onto the blog; as this will keep me on track during the task.

22. Changes I will make Cont. : I am going to also do some research into my target audience, and I am going to use a questionairee system to find out what genre my music magazine should be I am going to do a lot of research into the conventions of the magazine genre that I decide to do as a result of the questionnaires I use; this will help me to make my drafts according to the specific conventions of that genres already existing magazines I am going to use Questionairees again to present my drafts to the target audience and see what drafts they like and (if they could) what changes they would make to their favourite draft, as this will help (in the long run) improve the quality of my finished product. I will also use the same system to present my final drafts.

23. Changes I will make Cont. : I am going to take some more lessons on my basic Photoshop skills, and during the production work I am going to work close with my media/ICT teachers as well as a few friends of mine, as all these people are more experienced with Photoshop, and if I ever need help they would be happy to help me. I am going to present my magazine cover, contents page and double page spread to members of the class, friends, students and teachers and ask all of them what points of the finished pages they feel are good and what things they would change if they were in my position. I am also going to use a questionairee system and ask people the same question; this will help people evaluate my work and give me constructive criticism so that I can further more improve my work

24. Conclusion: In 2 weeks time I will be starting the work for the next task, but until then I will be doing a picture evaluation and explain why is used these pictures and I will also talk about how the pictures that I used in my magazine represent social classes And I will also be doing a blog post on ‘what kind of media institution would distribute my product and why?’ and I will be looking at a few different institutions and explain why I have selected my chosen one. Thanks for reading through this presentation on my preliminary task evaluation