Evaluation Q4

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research , planning and evaluation stages ?

http://prezi.com/adrotqb7d64q/present/?auth_key=gi9suqv&follow=2gmaf1cra2ro

Throughout my whole experience of creating my A2 media products I find that technology is a major part in all aspects of construction , planning , research and evaluation. From just being able to get in contact with the models and planning what would take place on the day and  what I wanted the models to wear. I also in order to gain some background knowledge checked out style and beauty blogs from students of 16-18 to find out what sorts of clothing they liked to wear or were interested in which would give me an idea of the available outfits I could get my models to dress in.

Using blogger to embedd pictures and information for my work was beyond useful I used it as sort of a diary and updated what my next process was , what I felt worked and didnt. Blogger was definetly one of the most important technology uses in my work , it was a collective of all my work. Its such an easy process and was easy for me to keep up to date.


With social networking one of the most popular devices for the younger generation I would have changed my work and included programs such as facebook and twitter. It would have fitted with my work and would have included different feedbacks from my target audience. Both would have allowed me to input pictures and put my work out there to see if it suited other fashion lovers.

A piece of software called Ipiccy is something new that I used within the evaluation stage of my work.  Ipiccy is an editing software which helped me create collages to display my images on blogger. Ipiccy also offers you the option to add different effects to your images . The software helped me create collages with my images by putting them together so I could compare them with existing fashion media products.  By using this editing software I was able to make collages with added text to show the differences and similarities between mine and other existing products.

Evaluation Q2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

My A2 coursework piece required me to make 4 original pages of a regional magazine , a website with 2 hyperlinked pages and a billboard advertisement which I decided to create with the genre of fashion. I put together the conventions that was needed in to my 3 products in order to attract the audience to my products which would then make my product effective. I believe that all my products are successful and effective because they all have a relationship making them all advertise the brand as a whole.    









MAGAZINE
After annotating different magazine covers it helped me realise what makes the typical magazine attract the audience. The purpose was to attract the audience through the use of stories and images as well as creating something unique. All magazines have little tweeks about them but all give the things we want to see. The magazine was my main product and so it had to be different and appeal to the target market , people who have an interest in fashion.  I think my magazine is effective to the audience because although its a fashion magazine the images and colours used are fun and vibrant attracting the audience to read my magazine.  The target audience being 16+ and mostly aimed at students meant that It would be better that my magazine was free because not many students have money to buy magazines so I think this is effective because it gets my magazine recognised as students can pick it up in public places for free. Keeping in mind that my magazine was free it had to feature afforable items inside or it wouldnt fit with the type of magazine.   In my double page spread and contents page I included high street items that my target market would be able to buy.  I also think this is effective because the items included are all available from stores students and older go to. Because my magazine would be available in public place such as universitys and city centers I thought this would create more publicity for my regional magazine.


WEBSITE

With technology used worldwide everyday  creating a website to go with my magazine would create a form of advertisement.The website isnt just available for fans/ susbscribers of the magazine but for anyone who happens to google search. I wanted to create  a website which would feature everything in my magazine and more. I think my website is effective because it features everything my magazine does so they are closely related and it contains other elements like the days news which can keep people up to date. The website takes a great amount of inspiration from my magazine. I compared my website with other leading fashion websites such as Vogue . With vogue the website is mainly black and white with little colour. For such a big branded magazine the website was a little plain and so for mine I wanted to make it more fun and attract readers to it. I chose the colours similar to my magazine which was an effective way in my opinion to symbolise with one another.
The combination of my ancillary texts to my main product, in my opinion is very effective for another reason such as I used the same person in my  magazine to on my billboard (Sarah Girdwood ).


BILLBOARD

The billboard is a product that would be featured  for when passerbuys drive by or see it at a local bus stop. The billboard is effective because I used the same brick wall in my billboard to what I used in my front cover magazine but with a slight different colour. This is something the audience will be able to recognise and assosciate with my brand. Throghout all my products I have kept the colours close together and consistant with each text which is a bonus for the audience because again will assosciate those colours with Flash.  I used the same font for "flash" on my billboard to what I used in my magazine and website again something which would be effective to make my title recognisable as much as the little yellow triangle would make it recogniseable also.  I think that my billboard acts as another good advertisment for  my main product, it shows females the same age as my target audience reading the magazine looking engaged, fashionable and happy showing the audience what they could be like if they read Flash magazine, making it an effective way to advertise my main product.

I feel the genre is easy to recognise throughout my magazine and website because the costume and images show fashionable items from high street stores. The images are all of confident, attractive females who promote fashion just like other magazines like Look and Grazia do.  I feel the audience can identify with my products because they can read my magazine and it leaded them to visit my website. All the products work together which wouldn't have the same effect if they were by themselves. 

Overall, I believe that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts was successful because the audience could recognise certain traits in my products and know they come from the brand Flash. I feel my products show a professional look for a fashion genre.

Evaluation Q3

What Have You Learnt From Your Audience Feedback?


After I took some initial sample pictures I took to the audience for feedback from my friends who all had an interest in fashion and were of similar age to who would pick up my magazine (our primary target audience). They suggested I took more images with different poses to establish the narrative and they said after looking at my initial images that they couldnt really see them featured on the cover of a fashion magazine as the initial mise en scene didnt show street fashion. From doing this I learnt that since I was producing a fashion branded set of work we still needed  to get enough shots to establish what the narrative was , so that the audience were able to get an understanding for what the story was actually when picking up the magazine and reading my billboard and website.

After creating a sample of my first draft I got some more feedback to see what parts would be better to change and what parts I should keep the same. The audience feedback was to add a special effect to the brick wall to give it its own street style. So by doing this I added special effects to turn the wall grey . This grey wall then give the new magazine the urban feel that it needed to fit the genre. From this I learnt that by adding special effects it can boost your product in a way to make it more fit for purpose.

Without Special effect/ First Draft

The colour scheme was a factor which I had various amounts of feedback on. From this I learnt that colour scheme pulls the whole piece of work together. If all colours are consistant throughout then the audience will assosciate the colour scheme with the brand of Flash. I did a questionnaire that asked audience of the same target ages what colours they would most prefer within a fashion magazine. The result came back as most likely to see pink and yellow. I did use these 2 colours but added grey as the main background colour as its something I strongly felt would show urban off at its best.
My questionnaire can be viewed on my blog by this link http://brogana2mediastudies.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/questionnaire.html

I went through various stages of my website with designing the layout and after a few discussions decided to keep my layout like I originally planned. With some of my  layout it didnt match my other pages exactly. My feedback was given to ensure that the pages matched , which is what I did by creating a layout on photoshop saving it so I could use the same one over again and this would keep it all the same on each page.  I asked people to stick post it notes on to my product with ideas for change and what to keep which would make my magazine better.

http://animoto.com/play/ciZVLe9Fdcv3rUM2wc3VGw

My animoto above shows some of the feedback from my target audience ( females of the ages 17 and 18) answering some of the feedback questions. This showed me what some of the target market thought about my finished products. The girls in my animoto all have a sense and love for fashion , beauty and style which is why I also asked them to comment . All the girls would typically pick up the magazine so I wanted to see what they would like to see in a fashion magazine as well as myself.
The girls all give personal opinions and werent influenced by anyone themselves.



To gain feedback , our lecturer filled responses about our products of our printed tasks which can be shoen in the feedback forms below. After recieving the feedback on our drafted printed tasks, there were a few changes that we had to make, to alter our work in order for it to appeal professional and to our target audience. For my front cover the feedback said that the subheadings should all be made one colour in order for them to be kind of connected and not have to many colours that could distract the audience. After I applied these ammendemants it in my opinion did help bind the magazine cover together as the first draft the sub headings seemed very seperated.

Summarise:
What works well?
Colour - “The colours all link throughout all the products”
The Look - all models look part of a fashion interest
Mise En Scene - Costume , all have a sense of fashion and beauty
The Title -Original idea
Photoshop Edits - some of the images having special effects
Overall Mood of the magazine and websites
Fonts
The products all come together - None look like they shouldnt be there
The link to region - Regional Models / Regional work
  
Improvements?

Different shot types - Maybe try a low angle shot or other poses
Better lighting
Better quality of shot
Subheadings could be brought together more
Make QR code linkable with website



Overall from recieving all this feedback about my billboard , website  and main task of the magazine , I have learnt that by asking for feedback I can create a product that the specific target marget would like to read. The target audience felt that the products represented fashion but in a cool affordable way and getting North East models involved to reflect the region meant that a relationship could be formed. I did learn that from my audience improvements could be made when taking images instead of just having a upright model that varied poses could be made. I applied all the ideas and correct conventions in order to make sure that our products looked to a professioanal standard and that they showed the theme throughout the products ensuring that  they followed a consistant theme and were able to form realism , to something the audience could relate to. The findings from the audience were a great way for me to see what typical fashion lovers want to see.

Evaluation Q1

In what ways does your media product, use , develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

http://prezi.com/iegpov8tl3ym/present/?auth_key=r4qxo1q&follow=2gmaf1cra2ro

The 9 frames above are taken from certain aspects of my work which make my work fit the genre or parts of my work which show a different respresentation of my work. My nine frames include,  The font and text , The Locations , The Title , Mise En Scene including covermodels costume and makeup , Special effects and  Camera shot. Firstly , Ive tried to develop forms and conventions of things which already exist within the media but also change them to fit my own style.  I knew I wanted my fashion magazine to be an upbeat , urban read which would be aimed at the audience from 16+ and I wanted the magazine to be able to reflect the younger audience, for example sometimes we may pick up Vogue and inspire to be like the model but think it isnt possible , so I decided my model would be a pretty , average sized model and that the location would be a simple brick wall  which the model would pose infront. I challenged the usual fashion magazine in the sense that they normally have models superskinny or famous with either flawless complexion or a new edgy style of makeup so I wanted to make mine very bold and street using UV paint and bright bold lipstick. Still my model looked as confident just like the cover model of Glamour ( above) who looks happy with a bold lipstick and a simple. In Propps theory , he discusses character types which usually include a typical male restoring equilibrium and being the main focus , I again wanted to change that so the hero was shown to be a woman who is giving the regional readers something to aspire to be. I wanted her to represent condident and powerful within the fashion industry. As my location in the fashion week hits town one of my models Sarah Girdwood I used one of the walls within world wide fashion store Topshop. On their changing rooms wall was a beautiful pattern which was very fashion orientated.  To give this an urban edge however I decided to give it a special effect to put my own take on it. The effect kind of made the image flash just like the title given to my body of work.  Again with the name of the title I kept the convention similar by keeping a catchy one word title like that of Vogue , Elle , Look and Heat. Flash seamed to fit perfectly with the theme. Like most magazines I wanted to incorparate something  in my work which would make the public instantly recognise my brand if they saw it . Like Billboard magazine with its colour fill in the middle of letters I decided this would go well with my style so kept this convention the same. To change it a little I decided to add a glow and an outline colour to text so my recognisable label would have a colour fill in the letter A and a yellow glow to make the label flash literally flash.

Most magazines if they are for free will not need to include a barcode because there isnt a need for them to be scanned , the public can just pick them up but with the rise of technological devices and since my other work was a website I decided to include a QR code which allows smart phones to scan it and will be taken to the website.  You dont really see magazines with these on the front cover so I wanted to challenge this idea with mine. Like in this  issue of Vogue with Natalie Portman you can see the magazine keeps its colour palette to a simple 2 colours . Red and Black. You can see the model here wears red lipstick just like the title of the magazine colour which is something else I incorparated into my magazine with the pink lipstick pink title. I used more than 2 colours in my magazine also to mix it up to give it that street edge.

 

With My Website I wanted to create it so that you could easily see the resemblance between my magazine and website.  With Vogue magazine , a website that attracts millions of views had their links to pages down the left hand side . I kept this similar to my magazine and placed mine down the left hand side. I did in  my research see websites such as The Crack Magazine  who place their links across the top of the page however. Vogue sort of keep their colour palette online simple but I wanted to go against that and use the same colours my magazine had featured. As the target audience for vogue is for more older females thats a reason why online its more simple and sophisticated. With the more youthful as well as older viewers reading my magazine keeping the colour scheme similar to my magazine sort of ties them together.

A convection that I wanted to keep the same throughout was the background/layout of my website . No website will change the layout of the website as it would just confuse the readers so they stick to the same colours, layout throughout.

Titles

Layouts

  With my billboard I found that most ones I researched were set on a light background. I experimented with both light and dark backgrounds on mine but I wanted to change the typical convection as many kept the background the "sky". I decide to make my brick wall a constant theme throughout both my magazine and billboard just so the readers could use this to identify my brand ' FLASH ' .

final designs

These are my final pieces for my coursework including my magazine , website and billboard.  With regarding time management something that took me a little extra time than I thought was the figuring out of Dreamweaver. In order to make my webpages link together I needed to change certain settings on dreamweaver. Since this was my first time using Dreamweaver I got a bit delayed trying to follow a walkthrough guide.  The guide below was something I made at the begining of the year and as you can see I estimated that I would only need  to spend 2 days finishing up. This took a lot longer with having to figure out how to use Dreamweaver and so took my around 4 Days.

 

website drafts 2nd attempt

My second attempt I have changed some of the previous images such as a calendar to make my own version of an event calendar. I have also created my own membership boxes as well as adverts and a subscribe button at the top to make it unique to Flash website. I have also made the dots on the left hand side under current issue , preview and get involved so they are all in line with one another. 

Since my title FLASH has a yellow triangle in the title on my magazines I added it in to my website to keep the magazines , website and billboard linked. 

 I like this version of my updated draft as it makes flash more unique. 

website drafts