Time Management Update

I have not been the most productive this month as I have completed my products and I am now taking my time completing my evaluation questions in the best way I can think possible. This month I have also compared my products to existing products which is something I had completely forgotten was necessary to my work and my first evaluation question. Although I am now slightly behind where I would like to be I do not think it will take long to complete my evaluation questions from where I am now. 

Front Cover Alterations

Having recently received feedback on my main product during standardisation and some of the things that were highlighted I could improve were:

• that the masthead could be stronger
• try out a 3rd colour to make it 'pop' 
• it was difficult to identify the main sell line (main article)
• unclear what the audience was with combinations of 'omg', doll up' and a sophisticated looking model
• that it is the 'party issue' but doesn't look very partyesque

It was also suggested I link back more to it being a regional magazine

I have taken all of these messages on board but there are some areas I chose not to change, some areas I tried out but did not change and others I changed accordingly.

With my cover I attempted to regionalise it a bit more by adding in the 'Northampton Edition' under the title which can sometimes be seen on newspapers, although uncommon on magazines. I don't think the edition of this disrupts the look too much and I do agree that it could have been more regional originally.

I also tried out a third colour (here you can see that I experimented with blue as it's quite a wintery colour but I also tried several others from my colour scheme plan. However, I didn't feel that any of these colours worked particularly well and so I decided that I would stick with the two font colour for my cover, but I have altered some of the 'internal' pages slightly. 

As for the masthead and sell line, my inspirational texts such as Glamour and Cosmopolitan have fairly flat mastheads and I think by adding a 'deeper' look it makes it look tacky and so I did not incorporate it. As for the comment on not being able to determine the sell line, most magazines do not highlight it in particular but instead just make it in a larger font as I have done with my 'Winter Trends' article. Another thing that was touched upon was the fact my model is hiding part of the masthead and so people may find t hard to read and so not know what it is, however, I am creating this product in the view that it is an already established product (I have labelled it issue 132) and so people will already know about it and know what it is. 

My target audience, as I have previously established, is females aged between 15-25, however, I can see why some may not think this as the model does look quite sophisticated and serious. With this said I am keeping in mind my target audience as members from my target region (the East Midlands) often dress this way themselves around this age and so despite looking as if it is aimed at older women it will actually be hitting my target audience quite well.  

'The Party Issue' article has been removed as I think it is too late to take more pictures to make it look more like a party, instead I have changed it to an article about relationships which I think connects more to my target audience anyway and I think will make it more obvious I am aiming at a younger generation. 

Double Page Spread Alterations

I also received feedback on my double page spread:

• try a 3rd colour
• 'where the items are from' could be more conventional 
• sell line/strap line could maybe have more significance
• there seems to be conflict between what is the main sell (winter trends or cozy country winter)

I agree that the 'where the items are from' label was a bit formal so I made it more colloquial by changing it to 'where's it from?!'. I also added in a third colour to help differentiate between what is the main sell (the trends) and 'cozy country winter' which is what I called the trend. 

The strap/sell line, however, I feel already has significance. In the second image I have screenshotted what the page looks like without it and I think it is quite bare without it. Also, many of my inspirational texts highlight fashion and beauty pages in this way and so can be seen to be a commonly used convention.

Second Page Alterations

One of the suggestions I got to make on my second page was perhaps remove the '.' from the numbers. Here I have tried this to see how it would look (leaving a few with the '.' to compare) and I don't think it is a change that I will be keeping, I think that the '.' makes it look a little more polished and so I will keep it that way.

Another thing that was suggested was to add in reasons the products are on there (i.e. to sell them more). In my original layout of my beauty page this was my intention but the way I had presented it made it look boxy and untidy and so I removed it, with the current layout I don't have room for this description. However, I have linked a few back to the makeup the model is wearing which may sell the products slightly which also gives the image some anchorage. 

Other than that I have just made small changes, having changed the colour of the 'deal alert' font to pink to make it stand out and changing 'where to get' to 'where to buy'.

Suggested Alterations

My work was recently submitted for standardisation by another tutor at the college and from this I have received feedback on areas that could be improved in my main product. Having looked at the feedback I already know there are some things that won't work or that I don't think will look like but I will try all suggestions out to see if they improve my product. 

This Lesson

This lesson I have continued with my evaluation questions and I have also done a comparison between some of my work and existing products. 

As part of my evaluation I am analysing my work and seeing if it is conventional or subversive of typical codes and conventions of the product. I am then going to do a fuller analysis in a Prezi or slideshow to make my work more media rich.

Comparing My Work To Existing Products: Website

My website is also notably more simplistic in design than the existing product. Glamour have very little white space while my home page has just one scrolling gallery of images, along with feature articles further down the page and contact information at the bottom.

Glamour was one of the magazines I took most inspiration from as I think their style (but a more condensed version) would fit perfectly for what I had in mind for my product. 

Other pages resemble the style of Glamour more than my home page, however, I am especially please with how my 'beauty' page turned out, although it has more of a blog layout than Glamour but I think it looks very professional. 

Although I took inspiration from this and other texts I mainly kept to the template that was on Wix when I was making my website, with only really taking inspiration for the content rather than the style. 

Comparing My Work To Existing Products: Billboard

Here I am comparing my billboard ancillary task product with an existing one. 

Most magazines don't tend to advertise on billboards so it was quite hard to find existing products to compare mine to as most magazines find other ways of promoting themselves (on TV, by word of mouth, coming free with other products etc.) and the product I actually took inspiration from for my magazine billboard was a Wildfox billboard which I recreated here.

For the purpose of an accurate comparison, however, I looked at an existing magazine billboard. This Vogue billboard was one of the few magazine-featuring ones I could find, and there are really very few similarities between that and my own product. This is probably due to the fact that the Vogue billboard is specifically plugging one issue, being an already household name the don't need to be simplistic for people to remember the name of their product, but need to be outstanding for people to remember the issue that they are selling and what it's for (in this case the their Cindy Crawford issue)

~

Similarities between the two include the name of the magazine and the model from that issue being on the billboard, which would give the audience member something to look out for in shops. 

The existing product, like mine also has the name of the website on the left hand side.

However, that is about where the similarities stop. 

My billboard is fairly simple, with hardly any writing on it so as to get the message across as easily as possible for the short time period people will likely be viewing it (at the sides of roads, on buses etc.). 

I also did not feature my actual magazine in the shot, unlike Vogue (which would allow the audience to know what they were exactly looking for). Instead I chose an image similar but with enough difference so as my product stood out compared with my other products.

As well as these points I also added in the tagline of the magazine into my billboard which is usually seen with clothing brands but as you can see here is less used in magazine promotion. 

Comparing My Work To Existing Products: Beauty Page (second page)

I have previously compared my work to existing products but since then I have made some significant alterations to my beauty page and so I have decided to compare my updated work to an existing product. I also compared my front cover and fashion double page spread but they've stayed nearly exactly the same so I don't think they require comparison again.

As you can see I have made quite a lot of changes since the last time I compared my product to an existing one.
My brief is still the same, to produce a regional fashion magazine and I have decided to add a beauty element to think is my second page.
Although these products may not focus on the same time of year they still look very similar in their layouts and it is easy to tell that both of these are beauty features from magazines due to their content. 

Similarities between my product and the existing product include the use of a number code to tell you about the product instead of having a lot of text boxes like I had previously which broke the page up quite badly. The products are listed in an orderly format down the side of my page and through the centre of the existing product which makes them similar. They both also feature what is effectively a whole face of makeup.

~

However, there are quite a lot of differences which help my product stand out from others that are similar. My page includes beauty products outside of makeup but this may be more due to my product focusing on how to keep your skin healthy over winter (which is when my product is focusing on).

The existing product also has a lot more text than mine does, however, I think the article on the existing product is more of a main article and that might be why there is more writing that goes into more detail on looks etc.

Another key difference is my use of a picture of a model sporting a look which my features products can create, however, despite this being absent on the existing product I have chosen to compare mine to it is a common feature on many beauty pages so I have just mixed elements from different existing products.

Probably the final significant difference in my work compared to the existing product is my use of a sort of background (the lipstick smudges and kisses), while the existing product is relatively plain. However, this could be because of the difference in seasons that the articles are set; usually articles set in summer and spring are lighter and have a lot more empty pace to give the element of freshness and light while articles focusing on autumn and winter are darker and tend to be fuller to reflect the darker nights and make the page feel cozier. 

I got the idea to put the background on my work from a product that was featured in spring/summer (my original comparison showed the existing product I took the idea from) but these products were lighter in colour than the ones I used and the colour difference I chose was because of the difference is season and to fit in with trends and the overall colour scheme of my work.

Today's Lesson

Today I am going to continue to work on my evaluation questions and I will also compare my work to an existing product. 

This Lesson

This lesson I have started on my evaluation questions. For my first question I have begun by analysing my work and seeing whether I have kept to or subverted from the typical codes and conventions of existing products of the fashion/regional genre. I am doing this with 9 sections of my work (the four pages of my main task, my billboard and the four pages of my website). After I have finished analysing I will put the images into a Prezi or slideshow of some sort and do a more in-depth answer to the question as well. 

Today's Lesson

Last lesson I received feedback from my tutor who said that as it is she can't see any further changed that could be made to my work so this lesson I am going to be starting to look at the evaluation questions and hopefully getting some of them done. 

Time Management Update

In my time management post back in October I had planned to have everything completed by the end of January as that was the rough deadline that my tutor had given me, however, I have not quite stuck to that but I had completed all of my products well before this and was just receiving small bits of feedback from my tutor in order to get the highest possible grade. 
Now, at the start of February, I only have my evaluation questions to do and posting of my final products before the final deadline at the end of March.