My Analysis - Preliminary task

My Analysis and Evaluation

I think my magazine cover was successful. I took typical conventions from professional magazine covers and used them to create my own. I used features such as a bold Masthead which stands out on my magazine cover. I did find choosing the typography very difficult and I struggled to make it look even slightly professional. However I think the two I chose worked well together. I used coverlines that would appeal to an audience for that genre of magazine such as giveaways which was in big lettering which would catch people’s attention.

For the dominant image I wanted a candid photo of some of the sixth form students so, with their permission, I snapped photos of them just hanging around at lunch time. I feel this sort of photo is better than an intended pose as it is more relatable. But I feel that would only count for certain genres of magazine. I whittled my choices down to three good photos but in the end chose the candid of two friends looking and talking to each other.

I did some primary market research of my own and I used the results of that to build my cover to appeal to sixth form students. I think next time I conduct market research I will ask more people within the audience, I’d also make sure that the sample of people I asked had was balanced in gender and other factors.

When Photo shopping the image I manipulated the colours and curves of the original image to make the photo smoother, sharper and more vibrant. I found this quite easy. I could have played around with it a bit more though. Next time I use Photoshop I will definitely explore and play around with more adjustments and modes to see how I can make the image look more appealing to the reader.

For time management I was fairly on time. I used up all of the time I had and didn’t finish before the time was up but I managed to meet the deadline. However I did upload the majority of my work onto my media blog the day of the deadline so I know for next time to upload as my work progresses.

For my future work portfolio, I will spend more time planning before I start making my product as I didn’t have much planning to show for this task. I need to restrain myself from jumping straight into the production of the cover and spend more time planning because that is where I will miss marks otherwise.