Dear Moderator, my name is Sam Wilkinson and my candidate number is 8043.

I have created two pieces of coursework, a preliminary task and a music magazine, I hope you enjoy marking my work :)

http://prezi.com/lm-n1e-ljsdo/evaluation/


This is a link to my Prezi evaluation. I enjoyed using Prezi and evalating my magazine! Although, my account had trouble uploading pictures every time I tried, so all the pictures you need are on my blogger.

Before this post I had only analysed each side of the double page spread, but this is my entire completed double page spread as it should be. I am very happy with this, even though this didnt take the longest to make, I still had alot of diffficulty with it; how to place the pictures, picture size, page size, text layout, the contents of the text and the layout. I feel I should have planned this more extensively so I could have got it done quicker, but I am still thrilled with the final piece. I like the pictures I took, even though they didnt necassarily match up to my planning exactly, I still think that they came out looking very "music magazine ish'". Personally, I think this is my favourite piece of the coursework. I think the whole thing flows nicely, the contrast between the text and the pictures is very effective and I really enjoyed writing the text. I love to write, and writing that was very enjoyable for me.

This is my final contents page which I will now analyse. First of all, as you can see i've stuck with the theme of red and white because I think it stands out and looks highly effective. I also like the way they are seperated into boxes, which I think looks very proffessional, as some magazines tend to cram too much opnto the page which can look untidy, and not very easy to navigate. This however I think is perfectly simple to navigate, the box at the top first off tells readers that its the contents page, which telling them the issue, month and year. The first box on the left is "THE EDITOR" which I always wanted to put in my magazine. This is a feature I regularly saw in the "Radio Times" and I thought it made the magazine look much more proffessional. I also took a picture of Ryan to make the feature look more realistic. The second box on the left was something I learnt from reading Q magazine, that to add seperate and more extensive sections for some stpries on the contents page is useful to change things up a bit, change the layout, and to also give readers more information. Down the right hand side is the "HIGHLIGHTS" section. These were stories that I made up, that I thought would go with the style of the magazine. Stories including the main artist on the front cover, Skrillex, Ke$ha, and a festival guide. Some music magazines tend to swerve away from music news and go towards the "gossip" end of the spectrum. This is not what I wanted to do, at least not for all my stories. I also decided to add two more pictures onto the page, one of the two artists and one of the main artist. I decided to use males for the picture at the bottom right as I didnt want my magazine to be predominantly female. Overall I am very happy with how my contents page has turned out; I like the layout, my own creative stories and the choice of pictures, colour and text styles.

 This is my final front page which I will now analyse. Firstly, the inspiration for my front page was Q magazine. I liked this magazine because of its simlicity and how aesthetically pleasing it was. The bold text against the striking picture created a perfect front cover, stylish and sophisticated. I decided to use the media techniques used in Q to create my own magazine. For this I picked a primary colour to be a them running through the magazine. For this I chose red, it stands out, and on the cover it matches the colour of her lips which was a technique I decided to use on the photoshoot. First of all, the text was all the same size (apart from the main coverline), which I decided to change to make the magazine look more proffessional. I also added an oppertunity to win something which instantly makes the magazine more desirable. Another technique I wanted to use from the very start was for the artist to give the audience direct mode of address; this makes the reader feel more personally sought out to buy the magazine, catching the artsits eye. My logo is also something which I considered carefully, I wanted a smooth and sophisticated logo which would mathc the style and direction of the magazine. Overall, I am ecstatic whith how my fron cover has shaped up, I think this was partially down to the planning, getting inspiration from other texts, brainstorming which pictures to take and using photoshop and its tools in order to create my front cover.