Evaluating and comparing my final magazine product to my preliminary task I can really say I have improved in 3 main areas. However, contrary to my classmates I believe that I haven't developed any new skills when using Adobe Photoshop. If anything, I was just helping others with the tricky stuff.
Research
Since beginning the final task, I understood that my market research had to be considerably more attentive to specifics. For my college magazine I had scarcely used the resources available - with over 2000 students within my college I decide to only interview one of them with what I believe are very crude and pedantic questions. However, this greatly differed to how I had to take on my final product. In order to properly assess & understand my market so that my product would be saleable I had created mood-boards & montages of my stereotypical audience. This would compose of suitable fonts, colours, hobbies & products associated with my audience. To get to this first I had to research on-line (with sites like UKTribes) as well as analysing pre-existent magazines of a similar genre.
Journalism
For my article I not only had to write something interesting & entertaining for my audience, but I also had to keep in mind the styling of my writing. I wanted my magazine to appear insightful but not intimidating or big headed. Writing isn't my strongest point, so this was a real challenge for me. I like to thing I pulled it off and gained a considerable amount of experience with my writing skills. Furthermore I had to be more cautious about the final edit, so 2 rounds of proof reading from others was necessary.
Feedback
One person's opinion (mine) is never enough, so constantly I asked others what they thought of my magazine as I was designing it. Thankfully for my ego, throughout the entire process I only received praise (even much so that I was often asked for critical help on their own designs). After my first draft of my magazine, before inserting my own images and content, I questioned others which could be categorized under my target market. Once again I had only received highly positive feedback. Awesome!
Feedback
One person's opinion (mine) is never enough, so constantly I asked others what they thought of my magazine as I was designing it. Thankfully for my ego, throughout the entire process I only received praise (even much so that I was often asked for critical help on their own designs). After my first draft of my magazine, before inserting my own images and content, I questioned others which could be categorized under my target market. Once again I had only received highly positive feedback. Awesome!
