Self evaluation
This is how my front cover turned out, overall I am very pleased with the quality of the final product. I believe my product has features that a professional magazine would have. For example my Masthead. I have this featured in the top left of my page, this was inspired by the existing hip hop magazine XXL. Similarly to their product, I wanted a badge that would stand out from the rest of the page and be instantly recognisable, it is important that I achieved this because this adds a sense of community to my magazine as only people from Liverpool will recognise this as it will be exclusively for them. The headline "Top Bars" also instantly lets people know that this is a Hip Hop magazine and that local slang reinforces the Liverpool community sense to the magazine. My main image is in black and white as some of the magazines I researched used this feature, this tended to be on the more old school artists, however I wanted to use this as the artist wants to bring an old school adaptation to modern Hip Hop. I chose to have my text in yellow as I wanted it to stand out from the black and white, I also wanted to have three main colours as the focus and this felt like a good way to highlight the text, this yellow is also something I see in a lot of local adverts and will give people that community feel. My main cover line is the biggest text on the page as this is what draws people in, the interview will be the main purpose of the magazine and will be what draws in the readers, because of this the interview needs to be the main focus of the front cover. I also have another cover line that introduces people to next months interview, this entices people to get next months issue as the reader may enjoy learning about this upcoming artist and wonder if next months will be as interesting. Overall I am pleased with my final product as I believe it looks professional and would interest my target audience. However there is room for improvement, if I where to do this front cover again, I would add more cover lines for other content within the magazine, this is because all the focus is on the interviews, and if a reader isn't interested in the interviews, then they will disregard the magazine as that is all the front cover advertises.
This was the final product for my double page spread, I am quite happy with its quality however I believe my front cover looks much more professional as this lacks in several of its qualities, however I still believe it meets the client requirements. A strength in my product is my article, my article is 427 words and introduces the reader to this artist and from the feedback I have collected it is an interesting interview. I am also happy with the pull quotes, pull quotes are a common convention in an article and I use them here to draw the reader in to want to here this interview. My article is set out in columns like a professional magazine, one issue I faced was that my interview was almost double the size but I had to cut a lot of content out to make it fit. I also wish I could have gotten an extra picture, on the day of the shoot we did not have the studio for long and I wanted to get a range of images to choose from, this is the image I chose but the quality of the image was not as good and I did not check it back before I left. Another strength is the use of red, the double page spread was very bland with the grey background and black text but the red makes the article seem more appealing, it is also successful at grabbing your attention as I want it to be the first thing the reader sees. I'm very pleased with how it all turned out however my double page spread has the most room for improvement.
How does my product meet the client brief?
I believe my magazine does meet the client brief as I have heavily focused on community, this entire magazine is based on community as it is only sold locally. The survey I created for my product research was completely filled out by the local community which is effective because that is my target audience. The content of the article also meets the brief as the artist lives and performs in Liverpool, this also achieves my proposal as I wanted this magazine to introduce the reader to a new artist. My brief also asks me to create a print based/ graphics product, for this I am asked to create a double page spread and a front cover, which I have done. It also states that all the content must be original content, to meet this requirement I can confirm that all the images, planning and content of my project was all created by me and none was outsourced.
Are there any conventions that I could have implemented
I believe there is always room for improvement and my product could be altered in many ways and feature more conventions. For example I should have made my pull quotes on the double page spread could have been in a different font to look more interesting, they could have also been bolder to make them stand out more. This does not only apply for the pull quotes, I believe the headline could have used the same improvements to ensure it pops out to the reader. At first glance, my article looks boring, so I would have used a better font and possibly a different colour to make it appear more interesting and intriguing.
My file type
My product was converted to a JPEG file as when presenting it on the blog, as well as future distribution. This makes the image easy to pass around as well as a high quality representation of what my magazine could be. JPEG images are very east to send and upload meaning that all distribution would be very easy as they are simply one file.
What software did I use?
I created both my double page spread and my front cover using Adobe Photoshop. It's professional and relatively easy to use, whilst allowing me to utilise the tools to create a goof product. It allowed me to use features like the filters, on my front cover Photoshop allowed me to make the main image black and white to create the urban effect that I wanted. It also allowed me to create all the text and put them in front of the main image due to the layers. My double page spread also utilised a lot of Photoshop's tools, for example I used the spot healing tool on the artist to make the image look cleaner. I also used the eraser tool to remove a wire that was in the bottom right corner of the image. Also with the main image I added a Satin effect to it to try and improve the slightly poor quality of the picture. To create my double page spread I had to edit the page dimensions to make the page horizontal and A3.
Above is the evidence of my use of Photoshop on both my Double page spread and Front cover
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