Evaluation Ideas

For my evaluation, I have decided I want to combine several ideas to make the whole thing more interesting and interactive. I know that I definitely want to produce some sort of video but I'm not sure whether I want to make a video of one of my teachers talking about my magazine, or whether I want to video a member of my target audience whilst I interview them and gain some feedback about what they would expect from a magazine and what they think of the magazine I have produced. If I do decide to interview my teacher, then I will still include something about my target audience. For example, I could take a picture of a member of my target audience and then take a picture of someone who really wouldn't be my target audience. The only problem with having a video containing one of my teachers talking about my magazine is that neither of them are my target audience so it may not be relevant. Sayint this, they could just give some information about the make up of my magazine, the house style, whether it can be easily decoded and whether or not it follows conventions.
Alongside the videos and photos, I think I will probably include some bullet points answering the necessary questions for the evaluation just so that I can make sure I have the right amount of detail that an evaluation really needs.

Alterations to DPS

I have made the alterations to my double page spread that I said I would make on my last post, and now I just need some feedback from my teacher and my peers to see if they think it looks better or worse now than it did before.

Things to work on from feedback.

I have been through and looked at my work with my peers and a teacher and we have come to the conclusion that I should keep my front page and contents page as they are because they really represent and follow the main conventions of pop magazines. The thing that I need to work on now is my double page spread because there is something about it that doesn't look quite right. We couldn't actually pin point an exact aspect but we thought maybe the use of text box around each section of text is what is making the magazine look less professional. So I am going to try taking the text boxes and the purple colour away and perhaps putting the text in a brighter colour with just a white background to see how it looks. I have some concerns about having a plain white background, because this is what I had on my contents page and it just looked too plain and boring and not colourful enough for a pop magazine. I am willing to try this though and get more feedback when this is complete. If it does not look any better than it does now, then I will have to re-think and come up with another way of making the magazine look more professional and less like a magazine made by a student on Microsoft Publisher.

Changes to contents page.

Here are the changes I have made to my contents page. As I have previously said, I thought the contents page looked a lot plainer than it really should do and I thought I should may add some colour to the background or the text boxes, so that is what I have done and I think that it looks a lot better and resembles a pop magazine much more than it did before.

Further ideas...

I decided that I was going to leave my magazine construction alone for a few days and then come back to it because I often find that if I am working on something for too long I come to a dead end and can't come up with any other ideas. So now that I have come back to it, there are some considerations and extra ideas I need to take into account.

1. I think the contents page looks quite plain and bare because a lot of it is white, so I perhaps need to change the colour of part of the page (maybe the title? or just make the background a colour other than white).
2. The double page spread also looks slightly boring and perhaps not as "poppy" or bright as a double page spread from a pop magazine should do. The layout is fairly boring and again, there isn't a huge amount of colour, so this may be something else I need to change.

I am very happy with the interview I have created though because I think it addresses all of the topic areas that a professional pop magazine would, such as the relationships of the feature artist and her particular style. I have also made the interview so that there is information about how exactly she got into singing, and as you can see in previous posts I decided that my feature artist (Sally K) could have been a winner of a singing competition which is similar to The X-Factor. I chose to do this because The X-Factor mainly promotes pop acts and there is always a lot of reception to the show when there are especially young singers on there. So I thought this would help to stereotype pop culture.
I am also much more happy with my front cover than I was before when it had the grey bordering at the top rather than the purple bordering. I think the grey bordering gave it a kind of "newspaper-feel" which can often give off a boring vibe - especially to the target audience of a pop magazine who are young and are often much more interested in celebrities and pop culture than issues of the world. I am almost certain that the front cover I have now will go on to be my final front cover but I would like some feedback from my teachers and peers before I go on to decide that for definite. I just want them to make sure that I am definitely following a specific house style and that everything I have done is stereotypically "pop" and that I am going about following conventions in the right way.

Comment on these pleeeeeeaaaaase!

So here are my page creations so far. As you can see from previous blogs, I have drafted these several times, but now I think I am much closer to getting my final copy. I would really appreciate it if people could give me some feedback as to how I could improve the appearance of the pages and whether or not you think I need to change anything. Remember, it's supposed to be a cheesy, lively pop magazine, so if you don't think it resembles that description, please tell me! Thanks! :)

FRONT COVER!

CONTENTS PAGE!

DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD!

Further development of double page spread...

This is my double page spread design. It has changed slightly from the first draft I did because the first draft was really plain and it didn't look bright enough or poppy enough to be in a pop magazine, so I added in a lot more colour. I still think it perhaps looks a little plain, so suggestions from anyone on how to improve this and make it look better would be much appreciated!

Variation of front cover...

I decided to change the front cover of my magazine slightly just to see what a different version of it would look like, and so I have some options when choosing my final front cover. I chose to do this because I thought some of the colours on my other front cover perhaps looked a bit harsh and not-fitting (the red of the boxes) and it also made the structure and layout of the page look a bit stange because it made the boxes stand out so much. This front cover is a lot more "girly" looking, but it doesn't matter because my target audience is girls, and so they are probably going to be more likely to pick up a magazine with lots of pink and purple colours on it, because they are generally more feminine colours. My teacher commented that perhaps I should change the colour of the background instead of having it just white, but when I tried this out, I didn't think the magazine looked as professional or perhaps glossy. It also didn't look right because the text boxes and the box surrounding the title are white, and these didn't change with the colour of the background, making the whole page look strange and unfinished. I understand what was said about the amount of white on the page though, so I will probably try to fill up some of that space which other doodles/cartoons like the love hearts I already have on the page. Overall, I am not sure which front cover I like best yet, and I may even create another variation of it before I decide on my final one. I also thought that if I am having trouble decided, I could create another survey asking my target audience which of the front covers they preferred, because this will give me an even better understanding of what my target audience are looking for in a magazine.

The beginning of my double page spread...

This is the basic layout for the first half of my double page spread. I want the colour scheme to be slightly different on the double page spread because it is the feature article, and so I feel it needs to stand out from the rest of the magazine. I am thinking of changing the border at the top to purple to pick out the colour of the tie my feature star is wearing and make it the page look brighter and more "poppy", just as I want the others pages to look as well. I was also given the suggestion that I could have half of the double page spread showing the star in her school uniform looking very innocent and excited that she had won the singing competition, and then on the other half I could have a photo of the star all made up, ready to go on stage, which would create a complete contrast between the two halves of the double page. The only problem with this is that I don't think I will have enough time to take these photos before the coursework deadline because the model I used is a girl from school and we only have a couple of days before the easter holiday, and then the coursework deadline is the week after that, so I won't have an opportunity to take the photos. But I can just continue with my original idea for the layout of the other half of the page and it should still work just as well.

Draft of contents page so far...

This is a copy of my contents page so far. Again, I think I need to change the colour of the grey borders, but I am still unsure of exactly what colour I am going to change them to. I think I may also need to add another photo below the 'Extras!' box because pop magazines generally tend to be jam-packed with photos and pictures of the celebrities, rather than more writing like a lot of rockier type magazines have. I think I may have overdone it with the use of cartoon pictures on this page, especially the flowers. I think a lot of doodle-resembling pictures are a good feature of a pop magazine but I have maybe used the same doodle/cartoon picture too many times in terms of the flowers on this page, so I will have to look for some different types of doodles. The colour of the flowers are quite weak too, so I think I need them to be a darker shade of pink to make them stand out slightly more.

Draft of magazine front cover so far...

This is what I have created so far for the front cover of my magazine. I have kept to the colour scheme that was preferred in the survey that I carried out, but I think I may change the grey border at the top of the page because it makes the whole cover look a bit duller than I really want it to be. It makes the cover look less "poppy" than a pop magazine should, and I feel as if I need to make it brighter to really catch my target audience's eye. So I may change the grey border to a blue border because this will really contrast with the red and pink colours of the title and hopefully make it a lot more eye catching. I also need to fill in a few of the gaps I still have left. For example, I need to add another photo into the 'Celeb Style Tips!' box and perhaps need to add some cartoon doodles into the box about 'Celeb Romance!' to just make the whole page look a lot more busy. I'm thinking I may also need to fade out the edges of some of the boxes because they look a bit harsh at the minute, but this is not something I am definitely going to do.

Additions to double page spread interview.

I have decided that I want my feature star (Sally K) to have won a type of singing competition like 'The X-Factor', because this type of show generally supports the pop genre of music. Therefore, I have created a few more questions that I am planning to add into my interview...

TTP: But it all really kicked off when you entered the 'Britain's Young Singers' competition didn't it? What made you decide you wanted to enter into it?

SK: Well I first heard about it through school. Everyone in our music class got given a leaflet about it, and it just seemed like a really good opportunity. When I went to the first audition I didn't really expect to get through. I kind of just went to try out and see what happened. I never expected anything as huge as this to happen!

TTP: So what was the audition process like? Was it intense?

SK: Well the audition are much like they are for shows like 'The X-Factor", but they're obviously not filmed. It doesn't get intense until you get to the semi-finals really. Well, that's how I felt anyway, but I suppose that could just be because I didn't get my hopes up too much until the later stages. I just didn't want to feel really disappointed if I didn't make the final stage.

TTP: Once you had reached the final stage you must have been pretty excited though.

SK: Well, no, not really because Sasha - the girl I was up against - has an absolutely amazing voice and I would have been thrilled for her even if she'd beaten me. I became really good friends with her throughout the competition because we were always put into the same groupings and she's actually got a record deal as well now, which is brilliant. I'm not sure when her album is being released but I'm definitely gunna be buying it as soon as I can.

This will hopefully build up the story behind my feature star and give her more substance. If I still need more of the interview to fill up the double page spread I could possibly add in some questions about Sally K's fans or about whether or not she gets nervous when she performs live to huge crowds.