Media College Magazine Evaluation

Q: In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media productsMasthead: My masthead is the largest text on the page and is also in a unique font and colour to the rest of the page. This makes it stand out and follows the conventions of real media products.

Main Image: My subject is in medium close up but is not looking straight into the camera (no direct address) which challenges the conventions of real media products because generally they are looking straight in the camera. But, the image featured on the front is of a good quality, the subject is in sharp focus with the background less sharp and is also bright. Image: There is only one image used on the front cover, this follows the conventions of some media products but not all.

Cover Lines: Cover lines are around main image and don’t cover the face, this follows the conventions of real media products as the focus is still on the main image.

Main Cover Line: is in a different font to the masthead and also a different colour which attracts attention. But the main cover line should be larger to attract more attention.

Splash: Splash featured at the bottom of the page to give an incentive to buy the the product. Featuring a splash is common but featuring a splash as big as the one shown here is unusual as a result it does not follow the conventions of real media products.

Q: How did I use new technologies in the construction of my media product

Adobe Photoshop 2015I used the type tool to add my cover lines and masthead to my front cover.

I used the international paper size when I created my front cover

Main image was dragged onto the page

I repositioned the image to crop some of the hedge behind my main image out to make it stand out.

Quark

I made the colour of my cover lines a contrasting colour to the background so that they stand out to make them more visible, I did this using the colour change tool

I used the photo draw tool to add photos to my contents page by drawing the image box onto the page and aligning it using the blue and purple lines to ensure there is no bleed.

I drew text onto the page using the text drawing tool and changed the colour to a unique colour using the colour tool. I could then typed the text in different font sizes to make different parts stand out along with large page numbers.

I aligned the text so they are even using the red lines which assist lining up

Strengths and Weaknesses of my media product and my use of new media techniques

Strengths:Photoshop allowed me to crop my front cover image to make it fit the frame better The text tool on both photoshop and quark allowed my front cover to look attractive and professional by the use of different fonts and colours.Quarks alignment lines made keeping photos and text in line and the same distance easy which improved my media product.

Weaknesses:Photoshop is difficult to navigate and the settings are complicated to understand at first.When beginning the front cover on photoshop, I found understanding how to use the text tool difficult.I found it difficult to correct mistakes that occurred when using the shape function, which has meant my splash is larger than I had planned. On Quark, I found navigating at first complicated. I found inserting photos difficult at times as Quark could not read the file size which was a weakness and photos also appeared at first overly large which meant my media product took longer to create.