Evaluation

Evaluation:

To be honest, I really struggled throughout this whole assignment. I think this is down to a range of problems I have had to face along the way. I found it very hard to keep on track and stay concentrated as I wasn’t totally in love with the concept of the assignment. I also found it really frustrating to use InDesign as I had never used it before and it took me a lot longer to get to the same destination my group had already reached as they already knew the software.

Evaluation of the group magazine:

I think the group element of the assignment was hard for all of us, as we are all very individual creatives. In reflection, I realised I shouldn't have let my feelings towards the assignment affect how I executed it. However, with all that said I am really proud of myself and my group as we overcame all of the several obstacles we were faced with and we produced individual designs and a group design that we are all extremely proud of. 

For the most part, I am happy with group magazine. However, I would have liked to change the front cover so it looked more professional and would have liked to ensure the images didn't delete so the final magazine looked better.  

Postmodernism in my magazine:

Becoming more globalised, more increasing global products. E.g. vogue was only sold in USA and UK but is now sold worldwide, technology has also helped increase this development.

We look at the world differently and in a more globalised light. As now we can see that magazine are published worldwide and are adapted to suit different people’s needs, i.e., different languages.  

Fragmented world. For example, Cosmopolitan publish different magazines for different countries. Their work varies from country to country so they can target a wider, multi-cultured and fragmented audience. When you analyse these magazines, you can see the multicultural makeup behind their thought processes as the main goal is always to reach as wide an audience as you possibly can.

When producing my magazine, a consideration of postmodernism and the ideas of globalisation and fragmentation can be applied to my products. 

Initial Concept:

Final Design:

My initial concept for my magazine was to have a portrait and very traditional magazine, but when I read over the brief and discussed with my group we decided to not go with a traditional magazine and take a more modern approach to it. I decided to make a landscape, interactive magazine but then make the actual contents of the magazine vintage and traditional. My original colour scheme was red and black but when looking at Cipe Pineles’ work and making my mood board, I realised she never used reds. So I chose a dusty pink colour as the background of all my pages, have all my titles in a bold black font and have my writing in grey and pull quotes in peach. When reviewing Pineles’ work and comparing it to mine, this colour scheme was a lot more fitting.  

My research was vital in the production of my magazine. I spent a lot of time researching Pineles’ career and her work. Like I have previously mentioned, my mood board was one of the main things that helped me. It helped me take the time out to research the different magazine covers Pineles’ made during her career and helped me create a theme for my magazine. Another thing that helped a lot was annotating a magazine cover. I chose a Turkish edition of Vogue. This helped to see how magazine companies adapt their magazines to suit different audiences and globalise their products in a Post-Modern world and how they still keep the theme of the brand by producing different editions for their multi-cultural audience. The various editions, particularly on-line versions also represent the Post-Modern idea of fragmentation. I tried to keep a Vogue feel to my magazine whilst still trying to re brand as a new magazine.

The target audience for our magazine would teenagers and young adults who haven’t decided a career path yet. The aim of our magazine is to inform and educate about different careers and about different media practitioners who were successful in those career paths.

I think by making an interactive magazine we will automatically attract our audience as we are putting our product on a platform that is more accessible to them. I also think by having a more colourful magazine, whilst maintaining  a traditional feel that the audience are familiar with, I can reach a bigger target audience. 

I have learnt a whole new skill set on InDesign. It was software that I have never used before and it was quite different to Photoshop. At first I really struggled to get my head around how it worked, but when I eventually go my head round it, I actually really enjoyed InDesign and how it helped me produce a final product that I am proud of. 

Personally, I don’t think my final design resembles my initial designs at all. There are some similarities in the front cover and the contents page but apart from that, my magazine looks nothing like my initial draft. I think this was because when you actually produce a magazine, you realise how difficult it actually is to execute your ideas so I had to scale back and essentially perfect a more simple design then poorly execute a more substantial design. 

In terms of coming together as a group, I think initially the whole class struggled to come to terms with the thought of sharing the responsibilities and having to communicate constantly to reach the same destination. Overall, I am really proud of my group. We came together, delegated tasks and set weekly goals to help us finish the assignment.

As a group, we decided that Harry would design the front cover, Sarvesh would design the contents page and we would follow my design as the template. Harry put the group magazine together and I added the interactive element to it. Looking at our magazine, there is definitely still room for improvement. It is not as clean cut and coherent as a magazine should be and that is mainly down to a lack of communication with the group. We ideally should have agreed a colour scheme and rough layout before designing our individual magazines, to make putting together a lot easier. 

However, with all that said, we still did a really good job and still managed to produce a magazine that fit the brief and still stayed true to each of our media practitioners.

Peer- assessment:

As a class, we evaluated each other's work and gave feedback. 

My feedback was quite helpful. Overall, it was very positive. The main feedback was about the typeface used. I needed to have used one consistent font style and size to keep a clear theme. I was already aware of this but I couldn't change it after it had been handed in. In reflection, I want to make sure that next time I have made all necessary changes well in advance of the deadline to avoid this stress repeating itself.