Planning Evaluation

Ever since I last blogged, I have been working on my evaluation. This includes:

• Planning the answers to each question
• Choosing an appropriate technology to present the answer to each question
• Preparing the presentation of each question

So far, I have completed the following questions:

• Question 2 (podcast)
• Question 3 (vlog)
• Question 4 (vlog)
• Question 5 (Prezi)
• Question 6 (Prezi)

I am currently working on Question 7, which will be a Slideshare.

Audience Research/Feedback (Main Task)

These are the answers that I received for the questions that I posted on my blog about my magazine, that will be useful for my evaluation.

Question 1: Who are the target audience of my magazine? What age, gender, ethnicity, class are they?

• Christians of all ages and classes
• Christians aged 16-19, white, middle-/working-class
• Ages 14-24, mainly female, all ethnicities and classes

Question 2: How are listeners of Contemporary Christian Music represented? Please describe in terms of how people of different ethnicities, genders and ages are represented in my magazine, and whether or not this reinforces any stereotypes.

• Laid back and chilled
• White females aged 16-19 are represented as creative and established but boring
• Reinforces white stereotypes of creativeness, but isolated
• Calm, quiet, collective, simple
• Younger people are represented as more mature and able to fit in with the older generation
• Conforms to white Christian stereotypes of naturism
• Presented as being anyone who is interested in a livelier form of worship, but mostly white females
• Goes against stereotypes of churchgoers being of the older generation

Question 3: Which elements of my magazine do you like?

• The colour scheme is well suited for the target audience
• The DPS is good
• The layout and the friendly, upbeat tone of the narrative

Question 4: Which elements of the magazine could be improved?

• The skylines could have been a darker colour
• The text over the photos could have been clearer

Question 5: What technical skills - on Photoshop and InDesign - could be improved?

• "I don't think any technical skills [could] be improved"
• "Happy with presentation"

Question 5

What technical skills - on Photoshop and InDesign - could be improved?

Question 4

Which elements of the magazine could be improved?

Question 3

Which elements of the magazine do you like?

Question 2

How are listeners of Contemporary Christian Music represented? Please describe in terms of how people of different ethnicities, genders and ages are represented in my magazine, and whether or not this reinforces any stereotypes.

Question 1

Who are the target audience for my magazine? What age, gender, ethnicity, class are they?

Magazine Second Draft

 

 

Front Cover, Contents Page and DPS

I had a lesson yesterday, and so was working on all the parts of my magazine.

Front Cover

As the Big Church Night In coverline had the less important words, 'Your guide to,' on a separate line to the rest of the coverline, I decided to do the same with the Olympic Effect coverline, and put the less important word, 'the', on the line above. This made the coverline shorter and meant that it didn't obscure more of the model.

I also changed the colour of the Big Church Night In coverline from black to white, as white is now a part of my colour scheme and the coverline was not as easily legible when it was black.

Contents Page

The only thing that I changed on my contents page was the image of my cover model. As I had changed the brightness and contrast of the main image on my DPS, which was taken in the same photo shoot, I decided to do this with all of the images from that photo shoot. The effect that this had on the image was to make it brighter so that it was clearer and more conventional, as it is unlikely that a darker photo will be used in a magazine.

DPS

I also changed the brightness and contrast of the smaller images on my DPS, and added an exclamation mark on the last sentence of the interview. Before, this sentence finished with a full stop, but now that it finishes with an exclamation mark, it has a greater tone of enthusiasm.

Workshop

I had a Media workshop during which I made lots of alterations to my magazine and learnt lots about Photoshop and InDesign. In this post I will be explaining what I learnt from this workshop about Photoshop and InDesign.

Front Cover

Contents Page

DPS

What I learnt

Photoshop

• How to use the eyedropper tool
• How to give text an inner glow
• How to use the quick selection tool
• How to use the magic wand tool
• How to use the magic wand tool and then create a new layer with the selected element
• How to change the opacity of a layer
• How to edit the elements of a drop shadow e.g. colour, distance from text, etc.
• How to use the paint bucket tool
• How to edit the brightness and contrast of images
• How the crop tool works
• How to make text bold
• How to change the view on Photoshop so that the guidelines are not visible, therefore getting a preview of what the exported JPEG will look like

InDesign

• How to use the rectangle tool
• How to use the gradient feather tool and change the level of tint of the gradient

Audience Feedback

I have received audience feedback on the first draft of my magazine via my blog, and am having a Media workshop on Wednesday to act on the feedback that I have been given. I have, therefore, made a plan for action to make changes to my magazine based on the feedback at the workshop.

Feedback

Front Cover

• The fact that the name of my magazine is a Psalm is good
• My front cover needs a better layout
• The image needs to be changed

I was aware of the image problems and have since changed the image on my front cover. I also agree with the fact that the layout is not conventional and needs to be changed slightly.

Contents Page

• The colour scheme from the front cover continues
• The contents are positioned effectively and clearly
• There is not too much space filled in
• Despite the above, it is still eye-catching
• The contents page is overloaded with information
• It is a little confusing as there is a lot of text

Personally, I think that there isn't too much text on the contents page, although I will consider shortening the article descriptions slightly so as cut down on the amount of text.

DPS

• There are two small images in the corner, and it would be better if there was another one as there is a space at the end without an image in it
• There is a good use of colour on the article (mentioned by two people)
• The headline that I have used is good
• The questions asked are good and make the magazine look more professional
• I should play around with some effects on the big image so that it is clearer
• There should be more colours in the background, as it is rather bland
• The model's expression in the smaller pictures seems forced

It would be possible for me to add another picture to the DPS, but I don't think that it is necessary. I think that having two images is fine, but maybe the layout would be better if there was one in each of the bottom corners rather than if they were next to each other.

The main image is slightly dark, so I will try and play around with some effects to edit this image and see if I can make it look better.

I don't agree with the comment that the model's expression seems forced. This is because when I was doing my photo shoot (Location Shoot 3), I simply asked the model to choose her own poses, and when she did one that I liked, I asked her to keep it while I took a few photos of her in that pose. Therefore, because the model chose her own poses, I don't think that they were forced.

As for the comment that the background is bland, this was something that I had thought was a problem with my contents page, not my DPS, as there is more white background visible on my contents page.

Plan for action

Front Cover

• Change the image
• Edit the layout

Contents Page

• Make article descriptions shorter
• Try some effects with the background

DPS

• Try some effects on the big image
• Move one of the images to the opposite corner

Alterations

When I spoke to my model, I discovered that she decided to use the name that I picked out for her (Deborah Judge) instead of her real name. Therefore, I changed this on my front cover, my contents page, and my DPS.

Front Cover Experiments (Part 2)

My audience feedback told me that I should change the main image on my front cover. I therefore took some more photos and have selected the five best ones. I have chosen to make front covers of all of these, with the same layout that my original front cover had. This is just to see which photo works best as a front cover. I will be changing the layout at a later date.

Front Cover Option 1:

Front Cover Option 2:

Front Cover Option 3:

Front Cover Option 4:

Front Cover Option 5:

I think that the best photo out of these is the third option. This is because she looks dynamic and the masthead fits well with the photo. Also, the lighting does not obscure her face by being too bright, and is not too dark to look unprofessional. However, my target audience may think differently, so I will be asking them which they think is the best before making a decision.

Magazine First Draft

 

 

Contents Page and Exporting from InDesign

I had a lesson today, so have been working on my contents page and finishing off the final touches.

I changed the size of the pictures for other articles (not for my cover story) so that they are clearer. I was also concerned with the fact that there seemed to be a lot of gaps on the contents page, and so made them bigger to fill these gaps in more.

I also moved the Regulars title for this reason; there was a big gap to the right of this title, so I moved it to fill this gap.

Another thing that I had been concerned with about all of my InDesign documents was that they were on spreads over two A4 pages, not just A3 page that was cut in half. Therefore, whenever I exported it to JPEG, the two pages were exported separately, which meant that I would have to stick them together after exporting them.

However, after looking on the Adobe discussion boards and asking my teacher, I found out how to export a double page spread (DPS) as a single JPEG from InDesign:

• When exporting, select the Range option
• Then select the spread option

Selecting these two buttons means that the DPS is exported as a single JPEG and not separately.

Front Cover, Contents Page and DPS

I had a lesson today, so was working on all the parts of my magazine.

Front Cover

As one of the issues that my teacher had with my front cover was my image, I took another photograph where my model was smiling. Another problem was the background at the far right had too much going on; it had stairs and other things in it that made the photograph look bad.

Therefore, I took a photo that I had originally dismissed because it had too much tree above the model's head, and cropped it so that this was no longer an issue. I also uploaded it to Photoshop and used the Clone Tool to edit out the background and make it the same colour as the rest of the white light.

I then duplicated all of the coverline layers from one Photoshop document to another, so that I could see how this image would look with the coverlines without having to make the coverlines again.

However, this image is still not suitable, therefore I will have to take another front cover image to replace the one that I have been using.

Contents Page

On my contents page, I added gaps between the review descriptions at text size 5, as this is how the other descriptions have gaps between them. Therefore there is continuity throughout the contents page. This meant that I had to change the wording of some of the descriptions, as the gaps meant that less text could fit in the box that I had outlined for the descriptions to fit in. I also got rid of the ellipses at the end of these descriptions, as they made it look childish and therefore would not appeal to my target audience.

The final thing that I did on my contents page was change the page number on my photo for the Hymns vs. CCM article, as this was now on a different page after I made changes to my flat plan.

DPS

I changed the size of the text on my DPS, as it was smaller than the text on my contents page which took away from the continuity of the piece.

I also changed the size of the gap between the questions to text size 5, as I did on the contents page, so that there was still room for more text even though the text size was bigger.

The final thing that I did on my DPS was to edit the journalism and cut a few of the unnecessary sentences out so that the bigger text fitted better, as if these sentences had been kept in, the journalism would not have fitted in the space allotted.

Front Cover, Flat Plan, Contents Page and DPS

I had a lesson today, so I have been working on all of the parts of my magazine. I have also made some changes to my flat plan, which have affected other parts of my magazine.

Front Cover

I only made one change to my front cover, and that was to change the name of the artist that is being interviewed at part of the regular features (each month there is a review of a new/unknown artist). After a quick Google search, I disovered that the artist that I had planned to name for this article (Soldiers of Christ) was already a band, therefore I couldn't use this name. Therefore, I have changed the name of the artist that is being interviewed from Soldiers of Christ to Pardon Received (which is a play on words of a line in the hymn To God Be The Glory). I Googled this name and found that it was not a real band already, and was therefore suitable for use.

Flat Plan

When I was looking at my contents page, I found that the length of some of the articles did not seem that realistic. Also, there were some articles that seemed rather close together, when in reality they would probably have an advert between them. Therefore, I made some changes to my flat plan in order to make a few of the articles longer and over more pages, and to move them around slightly so that they were broken up by adverts more.

I also added page numbers on my flat plan so it was easier to see the exact pages where articles began and ended and were adverts were.

Contents Page

The first thing that I did to my contents page was change the name of the artist interviewed from Soldiers of Christ to Pardon Received, to flow from the front cover.

I also changed the spaces between the titles (features, regulars, etc.) and the text boxes beneath them. This was because the gaps between them were different sizes, so I changed them so that they were as near to the same size as I could get them.

I changed the page numbers of the articles because of the flat plan. On my flat plan, I moved the Premier Radio Column to after the Worship Leader Advice column, therefore I had to change these around in the Regulars columns so that all the articles were still listed in chronological order.

The final thing that I did to my contents page was change the Reviews column, so that there is an album and a single of the month, and so that the text is more descriptive rather than just a list of albums and singles.

DPS

The only thing I did to my DPS was change the page number so that it fitted with the flat plan and the contents page.

Front Cover, Contents Page, and DPS

I had a lesson today, so I have been working on all the parts of my magazine.

Front Cover

On my front cover, I changed the main coverline (pull-quote) to a different pull-quote from my interview. This was because the other pull-quote that I had been using was far too long, and it took up too much room to make the magazine look professional. Therefore, I chose a shorter quote and made the text slightly smaller, so that it fit better.

I also moved the main coverlines around slightly, so that they fit better with the stripes on my model's top.

Contents Page

On my contents page, I realised that the reviews all seemed to blend in together; it was not clear where one album/single name ended and where the next one began, as a few of the album names went over two lines. Therefore, I gave every other album/single name a black 'glow' at 20% (so that the glow did not blur the individual letters) which makes it easier to know where one album/single name ends and the next one begins.

Another thing that I did on my contents page was to edit my Editor's Letter slightly, as before, the cover story was mentioned in the same sentence as one of the other features, which took away importance from it. Therefore, I changed the wording and punctuation of my Editor's Letter so that the cover story was in a sentence on its own and became more important.

DPS

On my DPS, I changed the wording of the introduction so that it made more sense. I also added a few notes in brackets within the interview dialogue so that if the reader doesn't know who a person mentioned by the artist is, the text in the brackets will explain.

Another thing that I did on my DPS was add colour to some of the text. I changed the colour of the headline so that the colour flowed from the red in my model's dress and therefore made it different from the main colour scheme and unique to this DPS.

The colour of the questions has also been changed, so that the DPS is more colourful to appeal to my audience, rather than having purely black and white text. However, I set the colour tint at 70% so the colour was not as harsh.

The final change I made to my DPS was to add colour to my introduction. I made everything green apart from the names of people mentioned in my DPS. I did this for two reasons:

1. So that there was more colour on my DPS
2. So that even though there is colour, the names remain black and still stand out against the green of the rest of the introduction; this is something that I noticed NME did when I went back to have a look at my Case Studies for inspiration

Front Cover, Contents Page and DPS

I had a lesson today, so I have been working on all the elements of my magazine.

Front Cover

I took some advice for my front cover and made changes according to it.

The main problem that I was told that I had with my front cover was that I hadn't paid attention to the sizes of the fonts. On real magazines, the main coverline is the biggest coverline (which is what I had before) but other coverlines change in size depending on the 'importance' of certain words. Therefore, I made the less 'important' words in the minor coverlines smaller. For example:

• The Olympic Effect
• Your guide to Big Church Night In
• Hymns vs. CCM

The words in italics are less important than the other words in the coverlines, therefore I made these words smaller than the other words. This means that the reader will see the main words first and then look at the smaller words.

Another thing that I was told was wrong, was the reviews splash. I had written 'This month's reviews', which is what the reader would find out on the contents page. It would be more of a teaser if only the names of the bands being reviewed were on the cover, leading the reader to wonder why they are on the cover.

I added another colour to the colour scheme - white - which also flows through the magazine. On my contents page and DPS, the backgrounds are white. Therefore, white is already part of the colour scheme on these pages, but does not appear on my front cover. So I made the boxes for my reviews white, so they are different than the other coverlines.

Another thing that I changed on my front cover was the main coverline. I decided on the pull-quote that I would use for the 'title' coverline, and changed the wording on the 'description' coverline.

The final thing that I changed on my front cover was the masthead. I was told that it was too small, and indeed the convention on magazines is to have the masthead quite big so that it is instantly recognisable. Therefore, I made the masthead bigger on the front cover so that it stands out more.

Contents Page

On my contents page, I added the photo that I took for the cover story, and added the photo that I took for the News From the Ps23 Office article. I also wrote the description of the cover story and added the page that the cover story is on.

When adding the caption to the News From the Ps23 Office photo, I realised that the '6' and the '8' page numbers looked very similar. This is because the glow was so wide that the number was blurred and less easy to see. Therefore, I changed all of the page numbers' glow to 50% of what it was originally. This means that you can see the numbers better.

I also added page numbers to the bottom of my contents page, so that the reader knows which page they are on.

The final thing that I did was change my Editor's Letter so that the cover story was mentioned in it, so that it didn't seem too unimportant.

DPS

On my DPS, I changed the size of the smaller photos and made them bigger, so that you can see them better.

I also added a headline - What A Glorious Sound - and a by-line. The headline is in a font that is part of the Rockwell family, but slightly different so that it stands out from the main text. This font is called Rockwell Condensed.

The final thing that I did to my DPS was to add page numbers, so that it is easier for the reader to find the cover article when they go to it from the contents page.

Photography

These are the overviews of all of my photo shoots and the final photos that I chose to use on my contents page. However, after I first posted this, I conducted a fourth Location Shoot in order to change my front cover image to a more conventional image. However, I did not make a Prezi of this shoot, instead posting all of the suitable images in the following blog post. Therefore, the photography for my final front cover is not in this post, but in the following post:

http://ellenlesserleytonas.blogspot.com/2012/12/front-cover-experiments-part-2.html

 Location Shoot 1

Photography - Location Shoot 1 on Prezi

Studio Shoot
 

Photography - Studio Shoot on Prezi

Location Shoot 2
 

Photography - Location Shoot 2 on Prezi

Contents Page Photography

For Psalm reading:

 

For Hymns vs. CCM:

 

 

Photography - Hymns vs. CCM on Prezi

For News From the Ps23 Office:

Location Shoot 3
 

Photography - Location Shoot 3 on Prezi

Location Shoot 3

Photography - Location Shoot 3 on Prezi

Interview, DPS and Photography

Free Lesson

I my free lesson today, I was listening to the audio of the interview that I recorded last night with my artist (model). I was typing it up and making sure that I had everything.

Lesson

In my actual lesson, I was working on my DPS. With my DPS photography done and my journalism typed up, all I had to do was put it together, which is what I started to do.

I added my journalism to my DPS and added the photos that I was going to use. On InDesign, you cannot actually make fonts bold, so I had to change the font of the questions slightly, from Rockwell to Rockwell Extra Bold, so that the reader can distinguish between what is a question and what isn't.

Another issue that I had with my DPS was my main photo, the photo that takes up the entire page. As it is in this screenshot, the photo is not properly aligned yet and I will need to sort this out in my next lesson or free lesson, but the main problem that I had with my photo was that when I placed it as a full-page image, it pixelated and became fuzzy.

However, after mentioning this to my teacher, I exported my DPS to JPEG and saw that actually, the pixelation was only on InDesign - once it was exported as a JPEG, the photo was no longer pixelated.

After college

After college, I went to the parish office of my church to get the final photo for the magazine - the photo for the News From the Ps23 Office article on the contents page. I took this photo in the office because the article is about an office, therefore this location is appropriate for the article.

I also have a model in this photo - pretending to be a worker for the magazine, as it was mentioned to me that I did not have enough models in my magazine. I had only two - my main model, and one who I took photos of in my studio shoot.

Interview and Location Shoot 3

Yesterday I conducted my interview for use on my DPS, and I took photos on my third location shoot. The aim of this shoot was to produce four images; one for the contents page and three for the DPS. I will be making a Prezi of this photo shoot and will publish it on this blog.

Questions, Call Sheet and DPS

Questions

I wrote the questions for my journalism that I will ask my model/artist for my DPS:

Call Sheet

I also did the call sheet for the third location shoot. The purpose of this shoot was to get some pick-ups for the DPS and the contents page. The contents page as I couldn't use a picture of my model playing guitar as she cannot play guitar in real life, and now the article is not a fake article of a fake artist but a real article of a real aspiring artist. Also, I felt that the photos that I currently have for the DPS are a little weak, therefore I decided to redo them and get some better photos in this shoot.

DPS

I have also begun the introduction to my article on my DPS.

Photography, Front Cover and Contents Page

Photography

I took one more photo for my contents page, to complement the article Hymns vs. CCM:

 

Photography - Hymns vs. CCM on Prezi
 

Front Cover

Over the weekend, I discovered that my model had actually began recording songs and that I couldn't use her as a pretend artist as she was actually working towards bringing out a real EP. Therefore, I have booked a real interview with her for the journalism on my DPS.

However, this also means that I have to change the relevant cover lines and change the description of the cover story on the front cover. Therefore, I will have to wait until after I have done the interview to sort out the actual coverlines that will appear on the front cover. It also means that I will have to re-do the photo shoot of her with a guitar on the contents page, as she does not play guitar in real life and if it is now a real interview instead of a made-up interview, I cannot have a picture of her playing a guitar when this is not reality.

I have made some changes to my front cover:

I have changed the fake name of the artist (Deborah Judge) to her real name, and have kept the templates for the coverlines but have altered them to take into account the fact that they will change.

Also, when I was doing my questionnaire, I realised that the coverlines in boxes were not lined up against the guidelines that I had set. Therefore, I moved them so that they all lined up and were neater.

Another thing I noticed when doing my questionnaire was that the coverlines for the Premier Radio column and the Psalm reading were not really neat within their boxes. Therefore, I moved the text of these coverlines slightly so that they were more centred in their boxes and looked more professional.

Contents Page

I made some changes to my contents page:

• I got rid of the photo of my cover star with a guitar, as explained above
• I got rid of the cover story description, as explained above
• I added the new photo that I had taken for my contents page and added the relevant text on top of it
• I altered how the two feature photos overlapped so that you could still see a sufficient amount of both images and so that they would both fit in their column

Questionnaire

My Media teacher asked me to do a questionnaire based on the photo that I had used for my front cover, as my model was not as styled as is the convention on music magazines. I therefore showed a group of 25 members of my target audience my front cover, and asked them if they would buy the magazine based on the front cover. These are my results:

22 of those asked (88%) said that they would buy the magazine based on the front cover. Only 3 people (12%) said that they wouldn't, for the following reasons:

• The photo would be better if she was smiling
• "The front cover doesn't put me off, I just wouldn't buy a magazine about CCM"

Other negative comments that I received were:

• It would be better if she were singing
• It's a bit 'in your face'

However, I also received lots of positive feedback for my front cover:

• It's a good front cover, but I would look at it online rather than buying it in a shop
• It's better that she isn't styled because it's a Christian magazine
• It looks very professional

However, a few people said that they would buy the magazine based on what was in it rather than on what/who was on the front cover.

According to this survey, it would seem that my magazine is more suited males, as none of the males that I asked said that they wouldn't buy the magazine, while all 3 people who said that they wouldn't were female. Therefore, my magazine would seem to be more aimed at males than at both males and females, but I will keep my target audience as both males and females as there were still a number of females who said that they would buy my magazine.

Therefore, based on my audience feedback, I think that the image used for my front cover is fine, as I had significant positive feedback for my front cover and most people said that they would buy the magazine based on the front cover that I have produced.

Contents Page, Journalism Plan, DPS and To Do List

I had a lesson and I was working on my main task

Contents Page

I added a description to the Premier Radio column, the reviews and the cover story. I also came up with a name for the theologian writing about Psalm 63.

Journalism Plan

I also began planning my journalism.

DPS

I began working on the layout for my DPS.

To Do List

Front Cover

• Research on front cover

Contents Page

• Get name of EP and debut album
• Get Hymns vs. CCM photo
• Get News from the Ps23 Office Photo

DPS

• Finish planning journalism
• Check out Creation Fest bands to research the kind of references to them I can include in my journalism
• Write journalism

Front Cover and Contents Page

In my lesson, I made the masthead on my front cover bigger so that it stands out more and therefore improves branding, based on my teacher's feedback.

I also did some work on my contents page:

I began adding all of the article descriptions and made the Editor's Letter run over two columns, as my teacher suggested that this would make it easier to read. I also added some text on top of the photo that I had for a regular and the photo that I had for a feature.