Evaluation

The ideology behind my music magazine was to create a media text that allowed teenagers who enjoy the pop genre, to express their love for the music and have a platform on which they can celebrate it which isn’t available to them at present, only younger children. I wanted the magazine to include role models that young people can aspire to and which allows them to be themselves.

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

The main image is a medium close up shot which is similar to images on the front of most magazine covers. In some of my previous drafts of my front cover I decided to use a long shot which didn’t follow the conventions of a regular music magazine. I always wanted my front cover to be slightly unconventional because most pop magazines on the market that are for younger children do not follow the same conventions as magazines such as NME, Kerrang and Q. Because of this, I decided to make the colour scheme for my magazine more conventionally pop. Pop magazines use a wide range of colours, not just the typical red, yellow, black and white. A lot of pop magazines use pink, green and orange. Because this magazine has a main target audience of females, I decided to use the stereotypical pink on the cover along with a more conventional use of yellow. On my original drafts I had kept the colours I used to a minimum and although they weren’t conventional colours to use, I think the cover still looks better with more colour. Something I noticed about my earlier drafts was the over-use of the colour black, I think this detracted from my intention for the magazine to be light hearted and fun. To change this I decided to remove the block black and make more of the text black so it would stand out better on the other block colours. An example of where I did this is on the skyline. The masthead was also black which I didn’t like so I made this pink, with a black outline, so it still stood off the page. Another change I made to the masthead, which is very unconventional to a normal music magazine but fits in well with the pop genre is to replace the “O” in “POPARAZZI” with a heart icon. I am really happy with how this looks on the page. The skyline at the top of the page is something that appears on most music magazines. Although it isn’t used every time on a pop magazine, I like the look of mine in relation to the rest of the content on the page. Something that I had to make a big decision about was the layers of the images on the page. My magazine uses the idea of thirds well. There is a lot of detail in the left third and the main image is slightly off centre towards the right third which is a common occurrence on most magazine front covers. Something I had to consider when looking at existing pop magazines is that usually they aren’t just focused on the music but have a lot of celebrity gossip in them too. When creating my cover this meant I had to think of different ways to fill the blank space on the front rather than focusing on fashion and gossip. I think adding one more music related story to the cover as a regular feature within the magazine would be a way to improve what I have already created.

The contents page does not look like a typical pop magazine contents page and this is because I used Kerrang as my influential media text. I decided to do this because looking at the front cover, contents page and double page spread in a pop magazine, it is the contents page that looks the youngest and my target audience is older teenage girls. I felt it was important to keep some aspects of the contents page similar to existing pop magazines though things such as, the colour scheme, images used and a message from the editor. The colour scheme of a pop magazine contents page is very bright, just like the other pages in the magazine. For this reason I chose to use the same pink used on the front cover keeping continuity  A lot of images are used on contents pages too so I did the same but unlike in existing pop magazines, I decided to put the images into columns to make it look neater as in Kerrang. The message from the editor is also similar to Kerrang but recently in pop magazines such as Top of the Pops, messages from the writers have been featured. Something I decided to include on my contents page which isn’t heavily featured in many magazines is the social network information for the magazine. Because of the way media is at the moment, social networking sites being a large part of that, I thought it was an important aspect to include and because if this I also decided to include a subscription option too. This is featured in some magazines but not in any pop magazines I have looked at. Overall I think my contents page keeps to the conventions well although they are a mixture of pop conventions and general music magazine conventions. I think my inclusion of social networking sites shows that I understand the media currently and also my target audience and their habits.

My double page spread has improved greatly since my first submitted entry. I found this the hardest to do at the start of the project but once I had a better understanding of pop magazines I think this was the easiest to maintain. The use of one main image comes from the influences of Top of the Pops magazine and We Love Pop. Their double page spreads tend to contain one main image and an interview. That is another decision I made which was a vast improvement on my first draft. I had written an article about the artist but after looking through pop magazines these are not featured on double page spreads. The text is in an interview format, and a “chatty” interview at that. Most of the double page spreads I looked at featured a competition with the main artist from the cover image but to maintain continuity I chose not to do that because my front cover, advertised a competition in the flash to “win tickets to see Rihanna”. Something else that I haven’t included on my double page spread is a drop cap. In most music magazines they are conventional but pop magazines don’t often include them so I made the decision not to include one on that basis. They also don’t usually have a main headline and just use another pull quote and enlarge it to entice the audience. This is something else I decided to do to make it a conventional pop magazine although compared to other music magazines it could be seen as unconventional.

Following the production of my magazine I created and conducted a questionnaire. Doing this allowed me to use the responses to improve my product for the second submission. One of the questions I asked was: ‘How would you improve the front cover, contents page and double page spread?’. A common answer to this question was to incorporate more colour in all three pieces rather than just black and pink, especially on the front cover. Taking this on board I have now added yellow, white and green onto my front cover. I think it has made the cover look more believable as a pop magazine. I didn’t add any colour to my contents page because I thought it worked well already but I completely changed my double page spread and used a lot more colour on this. I really wasn’t happy with my double page spread because I didn’t think it came together as one product. Creating a background so it wasn’t plain white has really helped the double page spread blend together and become one. It also meant I could incorporate the extra colour and make it more “poppy”. One thing that was commented on was that they liked the continuity of pink on every page, I took this into consideration too and made sure this continued on my updated products.

The images I had used were also another big thing that were commented on in my questionnaire. Most people said that the image on the front cover should have been a medium close up rather than a long shot. In my early photo shoots I only took long shots but since then I have taken medium close up images and I decided that these did look better and are also more conventional. A few people said that they wanted to see more images on the contents page so that it looked more “busy” but I disagreed with this and decided to keep the number of images the same. I did however change the image on the double page spread. Looking at other pop magazine double page spreads, it did need a larger image to remain conventional. The image on the double page spread wasn’t mentioned by anybody in my first questionnaire results but it was a decision I felt I needed to make.

The changes that I made to my media texts after reviewing the questionnaire responses were reasonable. After finishing my media texts again I completed another questionnaire and found that 90% of the people asked preferred my front cover with the medium close up image and more colours. 24% of the people asked said that they would have preferred the cover if colour was added to the background or there was another story at the bottom of the cover. They said that they felt there was something missing. The contents page received similar comments to the last questionnaire which involved comments been made about the number of images and the size of the text on the page which was said to be too small. Two media students said that they didn’t like the block colour of the subscription feature, they said it was “too much”. One media student also said that I could have included a tease line along the bottom of the page as a way of including an extra feature. The double page spread received more positive comments than last time and 100% of the people I asked said they preferred my new double page spread to my old one. They liked the fact that I had included a larger image of the artist and that the background was no longer plain white. 

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The social economic groups I decided to focus on were from the groups C2, D and E. To represent them properly I researched what these people did in their spare time. I interviewed a girl from the age group and social economic group of my target audience (can be seen here: http://jennnnnwilson.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/psychographic-information-video.html) to see what she spent her money on and what she was interested in. I already knew from other research I had conducted that they spent an average of £450 a year. Music is important to them and 95% of my target population own a music playing device. 65% of them spend money buying music either as a hard copy or as a downloadable version. 100% of them use the internet spending an average of 2.8 hours a day on there. 78% said they have worked at some point and they earned an average of £180 a month. Not all of my audience will have left school, some will be at college or university, in full time work or on apprenticeships. When I asked friends from college what pop or chart music they listened to, Rihanna was very popular so I decided to include a competition on the front page with an opportunity to win tickets to see Rihanna perform live. The artist’s names in the skyline and also in the featured images on the front cover and contents page were also mentioned, they too fit with the ideology of the magazine. Because of the amount of money they receive or earn a year being low I have set the price of my magazine as £2.10. When asked about the pricing of my magazine in the questionnaire the most popular price people would pay for my magazine was £2.50 followed by £2.00. This is a positive response considering the price I had chosen to sell my magazine at. When looking at weekly magazines that are already on the market, they are all under the price of £2.50. NME and TOTP are sold for £2.40 and Kerrang is sold for £2.20. I used these price ranges to decide what to charge for my own magazine. I also created the chance to subscribe to the magazine which means they will get the magazine 20% cheaper making it even more affordable for people with a low income.

Here is a graph showing the results:

What kind of institution might publish and distribute your media product and why?

After researching many magazine publishers such as IPC Media (http://www.ipcmedia.com/) I decided that Bauer Media would be the best publisher for my magazine Poparazzi as they run 300 different magazines across 15 countries. In 2008 Bauer Media joined the Bauer Media Group who were well renowned for producing magazines and radio. The multi-platform UK based media group launched their first magazine in 1953 which was the Angling Times. This was followed by the Motor Cycle News which started the Bauer Media Group we know today. Bauer Media pride themselves on their understanding of the audiences they’re reaching out to and with the results of my questionnaire, I believe I have targeted my magazine well to the audience I am aiming for. Another big success came for the group when they bought what was then a small magazine named For Him Magazine but this is now known as FHM, the best selling multi-platform brand in the world. Some of the current magazines they have on the market are either music magazines or celebrity gossip magazines are Kerrang, Heat, More!, MOJO and Q. My main target audience was females between the ages of 15-21 and the only similar magazines are Heat with an audience of ABC1 women aged 16-35 and More! with an audience of women aged 18-24. Neither of these magazines are purely music magazines like mine. The music magazines they have on offer are Kerrang, MOJO and Q and they are all aimed at males that have an acquired music taste. Bauer Media also own many radio stations across the UK and bought the digital TV music channel ‘The Box’ in 1996 which offers a range of chart music. This reassures me that they are aware and interested in the type of music my magazine has to offer and that they would be perfect to publish my magazine. (http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/)

Who would the audience be for the media product?

The target audience are teenagers with a mean age of 17/18 who are in social economic groups C2, D and E. I wanted the magazine to appeal to both males and females with a ratio of 80% females and 20% males. Looking at my media texts now, I think the audience is represented accurately although females will definitely buy the magazine more regularly than males. The ideology behind my magazine is to encourage young people to be themselves and enjoy their own style of music which makes them who they are. I decided to create a magazine for this audience because there isn’t a magazine available that targets them specifically, although there are some that are similar. I also love pop and chart music and thought I would enjoy creating a magazine for people like me. I also understand the genre and would have found it hard to represent the audience correctly if I didn’t listen to the same type of music.

 How did you attract or address your audience?

At the beginning of the project when I was researching magazines to use as inspiration for my own design, the pop magazines on the market already such as TOTP (http://www.totpmag.com/) and We Love Pop (http://www.welovepopmag.co.uk/) seemed to be targeted at a young audience and weren’t just about music, they included fashion tips; celebrity gossip and advice pages too. I knew I had to change this to meet my brief and also to make the magazine appeal to an older teenage audience because they will be more interested in the music. The most important part of making the magazine appeal to the right audience was getting the front cover right. I used a teenage girl who was 16/17 and that automatically showed the public who the magazine was for. The amount of makeup Scarlett Melody I wearing makes her look as though she is about to go out and an artist may not be shown like this on the cover of a child’s magazine. She is also in a deliberately posed position which is another indicator. The way Melody looks could also attract the attention of a male audience and make them want to buy the magazine too. The fact I didn’t use a middle aged person also encourages a younger audience, not only because they can relate to a teenager more but because somebody who is middle aged wouldn’t have a career in the pop industry. The colour scheme is also an important part of attracting the right audience, it gives away the genre of the magazine because bright colours are used, it couldn’t be a heavy metal magazine and the stereotypical colour pink reaches out to the female audience.

In my questionnaire I asked what age range they thought the magazine was aimed at and at which sex. The age range options given were 6-11, 12-14, 15-21 or other. 85% of the people asked thought the magazine was aimed at 15-21 year olds which is the age range I was aiming for. This shows the adjustments and decisions I have made reach the intended audience. The other 15% of people opted for 12-14 year olds. Interestingly the 15% were all girls and that’s who the magazine is aimed at. This could indicate younger girls may want to buy the magazine too or that some older girls wouldn’t. When asked about what sex the magazine was for 79% said it is aimed at females and the other 21% said it was aimed at both sexes. This is also the result I wanted as my target audience is 80% females and 20% males. 2 males said it was aimed at both males and females which shows they would think about buying the magazine.

Here is a pie chart to show how often people would buy the magazine:

Pop magazines generally don’t have a colour scheme and they use a lot of different colours throughout the magazine but again to make this reach out to an older audience I decided to use a colour scheme although it isn’t too conventional. Front covers of magazines usually use colours such as red, yellow and black but using pink and green meant I was giving the magazine a pop twist and hopefully reaching the audience.

Other things that attract an audience are competitions, the artist’s names featured and images. I decided to use a skyline on my front cover and here I listed some artist’s names that are inside the magazine. This is a selling technique that allows people to know what to expect without having to pick the magazine up and search through it. The artist in the main image also attracts the audience because if you like that artist you are going to want to buy the magazine to see what they have to say. I also used a flash containing a chance to win tickets to see Rihanna. If you’re a big fan you’re going to want to buy the magazine to have a chance to win the tickets. Every week there will be different featured artists on the cover and this will entice a different audience. There will be some people who buy the magazine weekly and then there will be some people who buy it every now and again when the features appeal to them. I decided that this magazine would be published weekly as there is a gap in the market for a weekly pop magazine and in my questionnaire I asked the question ‘how often would you buy the magazine?’ The results I gathered indicate that there is an audience that would buy my magazine on a weekly basis and the second most popular result was monthly. Some people said they would buy my magazine every two weeks which is also good. The 14% of people who said they would never buy my magazine were males which is fair because my magazine is aimed 80% at females. They may also not buy my magazine because pop music is not the genre of music they listen to.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout this process I have not only learnt a great deal about Photoshop but I have also learnt a lot about creating animations online using GoAnimate, how to collate all my thoughts and opinions using Prezi as a part of my planning, how to upload videos onto the internet and how to run a blog using the website Blogger.

I found PhotoShop very difficult to use at first because I had not used it before. Even the simple things I wanted to do were taking a very long time and at times I found it very aggravating. Every time I started my work I forgot to make a duplicate layer of the original image which was very important to do in case I did something to the image that was irreversible and needed the original image to start the process again. I found out early on in the process that you can only undo a certain amount of work you have done to an image before you are left with something you still aren’t happy with. When I got into using PhotoShop properly I found it useful to save my work regularly and also if I liked what I had done to an image, duplicate that layer in case again I made an irreversible change later. I would then still have a copy of the image I liked. This was a routine that I just had to get used to . Something that took me a very long time to work out was how to edit the text I had created once I had clicked off the layer.  At the beginning I deleted a lot of the text at times to start it again because I didn’t know what else to do. I then realised that clicking back on the text layer and still using the text tool you could highlight the text and change it however you wanted to. This technique became very useful to me at the end of my first submission when I had to change all the typefaces so they weren’t the same as the masthead. Another tool that I discovered which made me work quicker was the quick selection tool. Before I had discovered this I was cutting around the edge of the image with the polygonal lasso tool which took a very long time and it meant that the edge of the image was very straight and looked unrealistic on the page. I then had to go around the edge of the image again using the blur tool to make the image blend in to the rest of the background. At the beginning of the project I also struggled to change the size of the image. When I learnt how to do this using the transform option in the top tool bar I was able to manipulate the image in a lot of different ways including rotating the image, scaling in and flipping the image. The more drafts I produced of my media texts, the quicker and slicker I became with PhotoShop which helped me greatly. When I first started to redraft my second submission of the coursework I found it hard to use PhotoShop again because I hadn’t used it for so long but I quickly became familiar with the tools again and I am now better than ever at using the programme in the right way. At the beginning of the task I used videos on YouTube to help teach me how to use Photoshop. These videos feature in previous posts that I have created on my blog.

GoAnimate was a website that I was introduced to by one of my friends. They showed me a quick video they had made for another subject and I really liked the idea so I decided to create an animation video myself. I used the website to explain my progress and I did this as an interview. It was an easy way to show how I was feeling about the progress of my work and it was also fun to make. The one issue I had with the website is that to make long videos with a lot of characters you had to pay a lot of money so I could only use minimal tools on the website.

Prezi presented me with a few issues throughout the process. I didn’t like using the website at first. I didn’t think it was very useful but that was mainly because I wasn’t sure how to use it properly. When I became familiar with it and changing the settings of my creations, I began to like it and I was able to create Prezi’s well. I also learnt how to put images onto them so I could look at more ideas for my media texts. Prezi updated a few times while I was using it which meant I kept on having to learn how to use the website again but I think it was worth the hassle because of the ideas I was able to develop on it.

My blog has been a great way of keeping track of my progress and giving me something to use to help me write my evaluation. Originally I didn’t use my blog very well and I wasn’t putting much on there but as time went on I got better at showing my progress. This is partly to do with using my A2 media blog at the same time and I had to plan more for this. When I first started using my blog I was uploading images and hyperlinking videos to my blog and nothing much else. I have started to use my blog more like a diary now and I have learnt how to embed videos properly. YouTube became a great way of being able to embed videos onto my blog and after creating my own YouTube channel I was able to record videos and then embed them to my blog so they were better quality videos than blogger videos. I have used this process to film myself evaluating my final media texts and talking about the processes and how well or badly things went when I was creating them.

The search engine “Bing” has also helped me greatly in this process. I have used Bing to research all of the different types of magazines that are on the market; to help me find images of artists in photo shoots to give me ideas for poses, costumes etc and to also find out about Bauer Media who are the publishers I have chosen to publish my music magazine. Over the year of searching the internet I have learnt how to narrow down my searches and also which websites to trust with accurate information. Bing has also been how I accessed the other internet sites I have used throughout this process and it would have been difficult to produce my media text without it.

Now I have had a chance to redraft my work I am pleased with my media texts and think they are much better than my first submission, especially my double page spread. I do think the front cover is missing a feature but apart from that I think this front cover fits the genre of pop better than my first one. I haven’t changed much on the contents page because this is the piece I was happiest with originally. If I could change one thing on though I would use one more colour. I now think the double page spread is my favourite because a lot of hard work went into it. I love the colour scheme in the background and I think the image is really effective. I’m not sure what I would do differently with my double page spread if I did it again, I suppose I could possibly change the headline on the piece because I am less happy with that.  Something I really like about my media texts is the use of my original images from concerts and gigs I have attended; I think this is a special addition to my work, which others may not have had the opportunity to include.

Looking back at your preliminary task (college magazine) what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?  

This is my college magazine:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

This is my first submission of my music magazine:

This is the final design of my music magazine:

The preliminary task seems like such a long time ago and I am confident in saying that all of my skills have improved since then. My music magazine is completely different to how my college magazine looked. In my first submission you could tell that both of the front covers had been created by me.  I don’t think that is obvious with the second submission as I have used the conventions of a pop magazine more wisely. When I submitted my first front cover, I don’t think I quite let my mind free of what I had already produced with the college magazine because they were very similar, using only two colours and the layout was almost the same on both front covers. Now looking at the two images together there are so many differences. The masthead doesn’t have any backing colour behind it; I have included a lot more colour on the pop magazine because of the genre and message within the music, I have also used a lot more images on my pop front cover. The way the main headline is set out too is also completely different and I have learnt that not everything has to be completely straight on the page, adding rotation to text or an image makes it stand out more and defines my genre better, making it more conventional. I also opted to include a skyline as pop magazines do tend to use them too although, sometimes images are placed over them so they aren’t as obvious. Similarities in the media texts though are the size of the image, I eventually decided to use a medium close up because they are more conventional and I do think it looks better on the page. I could also manipulate the image more because it is larger and there is more skin on show. I have also positioned the masthead in a similar position and included a flash which was one of the few things I liked about my college magazine. Flashes are very common on pop magazine front covers whether they are advertising or just making some text stand out, I therefore found this very important to include. The one main thing that I seem to have kept consistent from producing my college magazine and all of the drafts of my music magazine is the positioning of the bar code  issue number, date and price because it is similar to the positioning of all the magazines I have looked at whilst doing my research.

Manipulating images is something that I can definitely do much better now and I think that shows in the quality of the image I have produced as my main image on the cover. In my preliminary task I just cut the image out from a background and placed her against some lockers. I started the process in the same way for this main image but once she was cut out I blurred all the edges of the image and made sure it didn’t stand out too much, that it wasn’t on the original background. I then changed the colours within the image using the colour balance tool, the curve tool and the levels tool, I also used the spot healing tool to clear up her skin. These are all tools that I didn’t know existed when creating my college magazine and even if I had known, I don’t think the images would have been to the same standard as they are now.

The fact I had longer to plan my music magazine really helped and that gave me the time I needed to think of ways I could make my magazine stand out. My college magazine was very boring and didn’t really say anything to the audience whereas I like to think I have created a pop magazine that is appealing to its audience. The presentation had to be right and I didn’t like how the masthead looked and because it is a play on words I wanted it to look clever as well as sound clever. I therefore decided to change the type face and cut out the “O” in Poparazzi and replace it with a heart. This makes the masthead stand out more but it also makes it look more girly, the main intended audience, and I think it reflects the use of the “cheesy” pun well. I didn’t use anything like this on my college magazine which shows my confidence has grown throughout the process. Having more time to plan this media text also helped because it meant I could look at already existing media texts, which were hard to find for my genre, and work out how I would reproduce that. Since submitting my first draft I have been to more music events which meant my second submission included more of my original images making my product more authentic. 

My video evalutation of my final designs

Evie evaluating my music magazine (video)

 

I found it very interesting hear Evie mention some of the things I would change about my product, especially on the front cover. She mentioned the fact that there was a lot of blank space which I will mention in my evaluation and the fact that "more imagery" could be added to it. I completely agree with this statement although I think I would change the background colour too, but I would only use a very subtle colour. She also said that she liked the double page spread which I have to say is now my favourite part of my project.

Final design of front cover, contents page and double page spread

Second draft of DPS text - question style

How is the new found fame treating you?

Quite well, I’m really enjoying myself. There are obviously some down sides like the made up stories in the press and the people who don’t like what you’re doing but I haven’t come across many of those.

Have any other celebrities given you advice about how to deal with the media?

Yeah they have actually! Jessie J called me the other day and was just telling me to stay true to myself and to not read the comments in the newspapers and on the social networking sites because she doesn’t want them to upset me like they did her.

We also heard Beyoncé has had some kind words to say, what can you tell us about that?

Yeah I was in New York a few weeks ago recording and to my surprise Beyoncé walked through the door and said she had heard some of the material from my debut album and that she thought I had a great tone to my voice. That was amazing for somebody of her calibre to say something like that to me, the small town girl from Yorkshire.

Would you say Beyoncé is one of your idols?

Oh definitely, she’s amazing! To have even a quatre of her success would be more than enough for me.

Do other artists influence your music?

I suppose, I pride myself on being individual and original but if I like an artist or a song I will think about how they have made the track successful and try to incorporate that into my own work.

That sounds like a good idea! What type of music do you usually listen to?

I love a bit of everything except heavy metal, I can’t understand why people enjoy that sort of thing but I suppose everybody is different. I love old school R&B like Boyz II Men, Alicia Keys, Ne-Yo, R-Kelly and Trey Songz. The relaxing vibe to that kind of music is great especially with the type of schedule I have.

Oh yes I love that too! Speaking of your schedule, what do you miss the most about your old lifestyle?

Seeing my family and friends whenever I want to. It has been very hard to come to terms with that and also just being able to walk to the shop or sit in a cinema screening without being noticed. I miss the “normal” things that you take for granted.

I bet that’s hard!

Yeah it really is. I mean I don’t get recognised all the time, in London it’s a different story but especially back home I can’t go anywhere. It’s a compliment though!

Yeah, a great compliment. What is your favourite part of the job?

I think my favourite bit is getting to travel the world and meeting lots of new people. My fans are amazing! If I’m in a city and they find out, I have people trying to find me to meet me. Touring is something I have always wanted to do and also recording across the world is great!

If you could record or shoot a video anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Definitely Australia or the Caribbean! I love warm weather and when I was a child one of my best friends moved to Oz and I haven’t seen her since so I would love to go there and see her again, whilst working of course!

Great choices, Australia is on my bucket list too. Now finally what would you like to have achieved by this time next year?

I would love to have had a successful tour and debut album, they’re my dreams. By this time in two years I would love to have done an arena tour!

We like this, an ambitious and down to earth girl. Thank you for talking to us Scarlett, see you soon!

My pleasure!

How I created my DPS for the second submission

The first thing I had to do to start my double page spread was choose the images I was going to use. My second double page spread idea consisted of using four different images on one half of the page and adding the text at the other side of the page.

These are the four images I chose to use:

This image was the other big contender to be used as my front cover image

I like this image but I feel it was very posed so it was better to be used on the double page spread

This is a lovely image but the arm took up too much of the image to work on the front cover. Once I'd cut the image out and scaled it on my double page spread, I think it works well.

This is my least favourite image of the four but I think it looks nice on the double page spread once I had changed the brightness and got rid of a lot of the orange/yellow background.

Firstly I opened the first image on PhotoShop. I manipulated the images on separate pages which made it easier to then put them all onto one page at the end and scale them.

The first thing I did to the image was duplicate it so if I didn't like what I had done to the image I still had an original copy. I then used the "quick selection tool" to select all of Evie and I then inverted the selection so I could delete the background of the image.

After cutting Evie out I wasn't happy with her hair. I looked too fake and there were certain bits of the background still left in between thin strands of hair so I used the "paint brush" tool and the "colour picker" tool to lighly paint in bits of her hair and match up the colour. I made sure the paint brust was very soft which meant the new hair didn't look too fake and once zoomed out it blended in nicely.

The next thing I had to do was clear up her skin. I did this by using the "spot healing brush tool" which you click over an imperfection and it makes it the skin colour of the rest of the image like it was never there. I had to do this over a few spots on her chin, moles on her arms and one strand of eye brow which looked out of place. You can't tell any of that was there now I have worked on it.

I then used the "clone stamp tool" which is similar to the "spot healing brush tool" as it gets rid of imperfections. I used this tool on the top she was wearing. As you can see on the image above there was a strand of thread that was clear to see when the image was zoomed out. The top also didn't look straight so I was able to fix that with this tool.

One tool that I found especially useful was the "adjustments" tool which allowed me to change things such a the colour balance, levels, brightness and curves in the image. These tools allowed me to change the images appearance a lot. I tried to make the image look less orange and a more natural colour.

Following all of this extra work I put into the image, I blurred the edges of the whole image so it blended into a background more. This was the final step I took on the photo before I uploaded all four images onto one PhotoShop page.

This is how all of the images looked when I first put them all onto one PhotoShop page. I was then able to manipulate the images again using the "adjustments" tool so that they all looked the same colour or as close to this as possible. The image of Evie with her arm up still looks lighter than the other images but that is something I have to accept because there is less shadow on that image, and nothing I can do about it.





This is how the images looked when they were set up on the page properly after I had scaled them down and put them in their own boxes. Overall I like the layout of this double page spread so far but I definitely need to incorporate colour onto the page which could be difficult with this layout. I am going to use the images I have manipulated again to see if I can create a better product. This could also be an odd design because it is for a solo artist, designs like this would usually be used for a band.

This is how I started my next attempt at a double page spread. I just decided to mess around with the paint brush and then actually ended up using this as my final design. The box that is on show in this screen shot is where you choose the size of your brush on PhotoShop. I used the biggest brush that there is and set the hardness so it was very low which meant the colour would be light. 

I decided to use this turquoise colour because I thought it was a neutral colour for both genders. This shows how faint the colour was but I liked it!

Once I had covered the whole page in the turquoise colour I decided it needed more colour. I then used blobs of the same pink I have used on the front cover and contents page for continuity and randomly placed them across the page. The paint brush was also large and soft for this. 

I then decided to use some smaller white circles to finish the background off. I think the white circles made it look slightly Christmassy and it also broke up the colour a little bit, following continuity of the texts boxes I would create later. 

This again shows how I chose the size of the paint brush and and the hardness of it. I then placed the centre line on the page so that I knew where one page would end and the other would begin. This was important to do before I started adding anything else to the page so that none of the images or text were only on half a page. 

I then copied the image of Evie off my other double page spread so that it was already manipulated and I was happy with it already. This saved me a lot of extra time. 

I then scaled my image on the page. I decided to keep her this size because her head went off the page on most double page spreads like this and also because only a small bit of her arm went onto the next page. This isn't that important because it isn't an important feature of her. 

I then created a banner at the top of the page saying that this was an exclusive interview with the artist. I later changed the colour of the word exclusive to red as this is a conventional colour to used in music magazines and it makes it stand out on the page which is important. 

I also decided to change the brightness contrast of Evie too. After looking at the image for a while whilst doing the rest of the work I thought she looked a bit too dark so I changed this level slightly. 

It was then time to create the columns I was going to put my text in. I turned off the other images on the page  so I could just focus on making everything equal. I used the shapes bar to create one rectangle which I sized up and then made a copy of. Once I had lined them up together, I then used the eraser tool on full hardness to cut out a circle in the middle which I would later add a pull quote to. 

I then used the same system as before and copied the rectangular image and then lined it up with the others to make a third text column. 

I then put Evie back on the page to see how she fit with the columns. I didn't have to do anything to change the image and the columns. I liked the fact her arm would mean i had to shape the text. It would give the finished product more edge.

The next thing I did was read the text through again to find a pull quote that I could use. I then used the text tool to type this into the cirlce I had created and then scaled it to the size that I wanted.

I then created an icon or flash containing the words "cover story" indicating that this is what was on the cover. This is a common feature of other pop magazines.

Page numbers were a small matter I had to deal with. I decided to make them white with black writing so that it was continuous with the rest of the page, as I had used white text boxes for the article.

I then created a caption indicating where the image is from

This is how leading paragraphs are presented in pop magazines. I decided to follow the same trend but I made the name of my act stand out by changing the colour of the text to a purple which I would then use for other bits of text on the page. I also didn't use a drop cap and just stuck to capitals as well because drop caps are very rarely features of pop magazines.

I then created the headline of the page which is slightly different in pop magazines, they just use another pull quote and enlarge it which is what I did. This is how I rotated the text once I had created it and changed the colour of the text to purple. 

This is how the page looked when I first imported the finished image into Microsoft Publisher. The text I had created was underneath the image. 

I used the send backwards tools to make the writing appear again section by section and I was then able to adjust the text if I needed to.

This is how the my media text looked at the end of the process as I was changing the colour of the Poparazzi journalists questions to make them stand out from the rest of the text, again using purple so it was continuous.