Media Evaluation Essay

Media Evaluation Essay – Skills development
Paige Jones

On my foundation course the task was to create a music magazine, including a front cover, Contents page and double page spread. We had to come up with our own artist and take all of the pictures and design all three parts of the magazine. Prior to actually creating the website we planned and researched, I looked at R&B as my genre for my magazine so I did a LIIAR analysis for three other existing R&B magazines and looked at current R&B stars. 

At the beginning of the year we also made a college magazine, we followed the same stages as we did when making the music magazine. I made a front cover and a mock up contents page for the magazine. I think that looking at the two magazine front covers I can see I have improved a lot since starting this media course in all different ways, mainly been more creative and coming up with better designs and getting to grips with the different software to create my magazine.

Before I started the AS media course I had a basic understanding of Photoshop as I had used it in school a couple of times but I also used it at home so I knew basic controls. I hadn’t really studied media before studying it at Wyke but I felt that once I picked up on the basics and understood them properly it allowed me to work on my designs and know what conventions they needed and what to put on them to make them look better. Overall before I started media at Wyke my skills were very basic compared to how they are now.

For the college magazine planning and research I think that I didn’t do a lot of it compared to the music magazine. I think the main reason for this is because I understood it better when it came to creating my music magazine which helped me to look into things in more detail. I think that if my research was better it might have helped me when it came to designing the college magazine, I might have put more thought into layout and been more creative with the design. I also think that looking at the conventions of a magazine in more depth would have helped me to get a better understanding and I would have come out with a better design in the end.

For the research for my music magazine I used prezzi, which I learnt how to use in media, to put my initial ideas on for the magazine and also looked into the target audience, how much I wanted to sell the magazine for, I also looked at three other R&B magazines to get an idea of what they looked like and the type of things they included. Another thing I did was look at R&B artists so I could see what they dressed like, particularly females as I was going to have a girl on the front cover. For my collage magazine I didn’t really look at any of these things in enough depth, I looked at some other college magazines but didn’t plan out everything properly. When it came to taking the pictures for my magazines I think there is an improvement from the college magazine to the music magazine. For the college magazine I didn’t plan what I was going to take pictures of, I just went around the college and took random pictures, whereas for my music magazine I planned everything out, including the outfits, before I took the pictures, so the shoot went better and I ended up with better images.

My front cover for the college magazine is very basic. The writing on it doesn’t stand out and just blends in with the picture. When it came to taking the pictures for my college magazine it wasn’t planned, I went around college with a friend and took any pictures that I thought would look good and I think that if I planned this better then it could have improved the look of the front cover. I have also learnt a lot more about manipulating my images to make them look better. Editing the levels and airbrushing the images improves the overall look of the magazine and you can see this on my music magazine more.

During the media course I have learnt to be more creative with my work and make sure it stand out, the writing on my music magazine is a lot more noticeable. Although I did establish a colour scheme I don’t really think it comes across very strong on the front cover whereas on my music magazine you can tell the colours I chose to use as my colour scheme. I think the improvement in the final designs is mainly down to learning how to use Photoshop better in media and other subjects so I could use it to create better and more professional looking designs and also having a better understanding of the conventions towards the end of the year so I knew what is expected from an R&B magazine and what would look good and interest people.

On my contents page it shows that I knew that making sure the text stood out was important and I could change it a lot more as my skills in Photoshop improved a lot.  This made it easier for the audience to see the writing, on some of my drafts you couldn’t see the writing very well but I learnt new ways of making it stand out more. Although I think there could be further improvements on my music magazine, you can see the difference between what I knew and my skills when I was creating the college magazine and when I created my music magazine.

On my double page spread I think my images and the layout of it are a lot better quality than my college magazine. This is down to planning it out before I started it, without this when designing it I would have just been putting in what I thought of at the time like I did for the college magazine rather than following what I set out to do.

Overall I think I have improved in all areas after my first year of media. With digital technology I have learnt how to use the camera to get the best and most professional photos I have also learnt how to use new programs such as Prezzi and my skills in Photoshop have improved a lot. I think my creativity has become better as I got more into the designing and knew the conventions of magazines better and understood them properly. For my college magazine my research and planning was very basic and my college magazine didn’t turn out very well. However for my music magazine id did more detailed research and put more effort into planning it and I think this improved the overall look of the magazine.