Evaluation Question 7

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

When I first started my preliminary task I was clueless about designing magazines. As someone who is not a regular consumer of magazines the level of knowledge in actually laying one out was expected to be as poor as it was. My preliminary task was very basic and I had no knowledge of colour co-ordinating, structure or choosing effective font styles. 

Firstly although the quality of the images used were quite good, I did not have good enough images to produce on the front cover or contents page. At the time my aim was to make the image related to the genre of the magazine rather than its quality and how the model was actually positioned. This compares to my final piece as the use of Photoshop and InDesign allowed me to understand what I was actually able to accomplish and how I could adapt and edit pictures to improve them. By my research on various music magazines this gave me the knowledge I needed to know on how to physically take successful pictures.


When it came to laying out cover lines on the front cover of a magazine, although I thought I knew what I was doing, I was clueless. I had no knowledge of using different font sizes to help specific cover lines stand out and that all cover lines to an extent should be positioned with appropriate alignment. When producing my Preliminary task I took no notice of this and decided to produce the magazine the way I thought it should be, but looking back at it now, to me it is very poor. Also, I realised that the amount of cover lines presented on the front cover of my Preliminary school magazine were not enough and in the real world would not strike the audiences attention at all. Again from masses of magazine researching which consisted having to buy multiple music magazines, I realised that all cover lines were appropriately positioned and the resizing of cover lines was used for specific facts and story lines used to attract and engage audiences.


The font used for the title of my Preliminary task was very dull and boring; it looked like it could have been created on 'Microsoft Paint'. The text was not eye catching at all and there was nothing significant and attractive about it and also had no relation to the genre of the magazine what so ever, which compares to my final production as the use of shadows and glows really helped create an effect for the magazine and made it more realistic.

When looking back at both pieces of work, I also noticed that on my Preliminary task there was no barcode or price; people could argue that as the product was produced to be distributed in school that the issued should be free, when doing my research I found out that all, if not most magazines do have a barcode and a price displayed and with the idea that my media product would be distributed in local stores this idea of inserting barcodes and including the price was vital and had to be inserted during the production of my music magazine.


Although during the Preliminary task we did not produce a double page spread (which would of been beyond disastrous) I can clearly say that whilst learning alot about the use of Photoshop and InDesign through doing the preliminary task and the construction of my front cover and contents for my music magazine, this had a huge impact on the presentation of my double page spread, leading me to create an extra page to my magazine. I learnt many techniques such as how to create drop shadows and glows, easier ways to align text, how to manipulate and insert images and text wrap along with many other things that I did not think was possible during the process of creating my school magazine.

Research On Vibe Magazine

Vibe magazine is a very well known Urban magazine for those who really enjoy hip hop and R&B music. I have chosen to research this particular magazine as it is the magazine which will inspire me to create my music magazine. The genre and style of magazine is what I want my magazine to look like therefore I had to research how and why VIBE magazine is successful and how its elements from the front cover, contents and double page spread can contribute to this. 

Vibe is a music and entertainment magazine founded by producer Quincy Jones. The publication predominantly features R&B and hip-hop music artists, actors and other entertainers. After shutting down production in Summer 2009, Vibe was purchased by the private equity investment fund InterMedia Partners and is now issued quarterly with double covers, with a larger online presence, aided by the Vibe LifeStyle Network, a group of entertainment/music websites under the Vibe brand. The magazine's target demographic is predominantly young, urban followers of hip-hop culture. The audience that I want my music magazine to attract is also predominantly young therefore Vibe magazine is a good use of inspiration for my work.

Vibe has a circulation of approximately 800,000 which is quite a high circulation meaning that the magazine is very successful. As well as magazines, Vibe has expanded its brand by publishing books on hip-hop culture such as "VX: Ten Years of Vibe Photography and also otherbooks published under the Vibe banner cover featuring the history of hip-hop, the women of hip-hop, and rappers Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. who are very well known Urban artists. Additionally, the magazine published a spin-off publication, Vibe Vixen from 2004 to 2007. Aimed at Vibe's female multicultural demographic, Vibe Vixen included features on beauty, fashion, and female entertainers.

As an audience of Vibe magazine I had to look at various examples of Vibe magazine front covers specifically because its the first thing you would see, and asked myself why the cover appeals to me. I realised that my attraction to the front cover was the cover lines, main image and style. The cover lines quote specific stories or news that would immediately grasp a young persons attention. It shows that the content of my magazine is most likely to be interesting and engage readers to carry on reading. Also the main image and the use of costumes and body posture are very eye catching and as the main image of Vibe magazine is always someone within the R&B/Hip Hop industry which is an immediate call for a young buyers attention. The way in which the image reflects and contributes to the house style of the magazine is very effective, for example what the model is wearing and how the style and costume contributes to the colour scheme and style of the magazine.

When looking at various contents pages of vibe magazine, I noticed that they didn't consist of many columns and had a rather large image featured on the page. Personally I thought that the contents page was quite empty and could consist of more, but as people within urban subcultures are associated with simplicity I came to the conclusion that maybe this was used to portray this, but of course I may be wrong. Although I felt there wasn't enough on the contents page I did like the way that certain elements were extracted from the front cover such as the Vibe Logo to keep the house style flowing. This showed me that in order for my magazine to be successful and appealing to the audience the consistency of house style is very important.

Here I have done somthing different. Below displays some secondary research I found from a source that someone else has created.

Vibe double page spread analysis

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Original Photo's

Below are the images used throughout my media product before they were edited.

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Evaluation Question 6

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

During the process of constructing my project, I used a variety of different technologies in order to help me successfully construct my project. The main equipment I have used during this process is a Canon 1000d Camera, Adobe Photoshop CS5 extended, Adobe Indesign CS5 extended, Blogger along with the other facilities that the Internet has to offer. Microsoft word was also used to a degree when drafting out the contents for my double page spread.

The first piece of Software that I was taught during this course was Adobe Photoshop CS4, an image manipulation program created by Adobe. The Software consists of a number of tools which were very useful in constructing my magazine as it allowed me to change the brightness, saturation and contrast of images, resize them, apply effects such as shadows and glows to images and text and many other things in which photoshop has to offer. 

Using photoshop allowed me to do all the thing i wanted to do making it easier to put my ideas into practise and develop them on my front cover and contents page. If I was to use a different program for creating all three pages, I wouldn't have been able to create the visual effects that i wanted to be shown on each page in the way that Photoshop allows me too for example, programmes such as Paint would be inconvenient as there are limited options and tools to choose from and its lack of technology within the programme would have prevented my magazine from looking professional therefore Adobe Photoshop is the more sensible choice of Software for creating a detailed piece of work such as a music magazine.

My double page spread constructed on a slightly different programme called Adobe InDesign which is a Software that can be used to create magazine articles and other forms of print media. As we were not introduced to InDesign during the process of our preliminary task construction I had to get to grips with how the programme really worked and how this could benefit my double page spread. InDesign consists of many tools just like Photoshop but also allows you to 'Text Wrap' which allows you import an image or a separate piece of text into a written article allowing the text to wrap around the images instead of making the text cover the image or be hidden by the image.This programme was the most appropriate programme to use for the double page spread as it allowed you to display columns in which text could be put in to help structure the page like other music magazine double page spreads published in the music magazines we currently see today. 

This was the camera that I used to take the pictures that I will later use for my Front Page, Contents Page and Double Page Spread, and this shirt pocket-sized camera has many useful features that I used to make sure my images where taken in the best possible quality. Arguably the most useful feature was the automatic scene-selector that has been built into the camera, allowing the camera to select which scene mode (out of 18 different settings) would best suit the mise-en-scene, shot composition and the mode of address present in my scene. Without this feature at my disposal my photoshoot would have taken a considerably longer time to get the required shots and I doubt my photos would have been in the same quality as they are now. This particular camera also has a 5x Optical Zoom, 4 means of reducing the blur of an image, an Electronic Vibration Reduction and even a Skin Softening feature to reduce the appearance of uneven skin tonnes. All of these features together helped to ensure that my pictures were as high quality as possible, and without these tools at my disposal my pictures would have appeared grainy, blurry and unsuitable for use in my Media Product.

Lastly, we have Blogger. Blogger is an online tool which gave me the ability to record all of my work online in the form of a blog, without the need for folders with print-outs of my work and having to work on paper which would make loosing work very easy. Blogger has many tools and features that I have used to make my blog easy to navigate for not only myself but who ever visits my blog such as the ability to assign labels to a post which allows me to create a list of links that made my blog much easier to navigate and contributed to presenting my work in a more professional order. Without this, I would have had to print of all of my work and place it in a folder with the use of dividers. This would have been very time consuming therefore I believe blogger was the most convenient and affective way to present my work.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

How did you address/attract your audience? on Prezi

Double Page Spread Article

Urban interviews El Manyera, one of our ‘new comers’ in the music industry and asks a few questions getting into the depths of what the real El Manyera is all about.
She pops her head through the door shyly giving a wide grin stretched from ear to ear, her louboutin heels aggressively clapping the surface of the floor boards; she walks across the room to shake my hand, a stern shake it was her nerves disappeared, she was ready to start!

Right, So let’s cut to the chase. Everyone’s dying to hear about the album you are yet to release, tell us about it!
I really shouldn’t be giving anything away, but since you asked nicely, fuck it! Basically, my new album is called ‘I Still Grow’ which will be released February 6th; I believe that’s next Monday? Erm, well I aint sure what day it is but yeah, 6th Feb. All the songs on the album are pretty much written by me but with a little help from friends and family. I’ve collaborated with Jessie J on one of the tracks featured on the album that funny enough I used to go Brits School with back in my younger years. I refer to the album as a ‘time line’. It reflects the life I have lived so far and what I expect to come out of it. It’s pretty much a summary of my life and the different aspects encountered within it.

Ok, so what would you consider being your favourite track on the album and why?
Well, making music and selling albums is the life I’ve chosen and worked hard for, so if I’m gonna do it, then I gotta do it well, ya get me? I just wanted to put my point across really. Erm, my favourite track on the album would be ‘Stronger’ because it explains the break up between me and my ex-boyfriend which was a very tough time for me. I just decided to write the song to get my feelings out and I found writing a song about it was the best way to express how I really felt; I thought that maybe it’s not just me going through the situation and that others can relate to the song. The song is designed to reinforce overcoming a tough situation that may break you and growing emotionally stronger as a person.

Interesting. Now, moving on, let’s get some insight into the real life of El Manyera.
Oh-no, go on... 

Tell us a little more about yourself, what your ambitions are, you as a ‘normal’ person, nights out, anything like that. What are you really like?
There’s really not much to tell. Ok maybe there is I’m not that boring. Erm, well to start off with, I’m very family orientated. I love spending time with my family and I always try to fly them out with me when I’m going certain places. I’ve got my first upcoming tour and I know I’m not gonna be able to fly them out with me. I’m gonna miss them so much. I’ve got a younger brother who loves music and wants to do what I do. He’s doesn’t sing but he’s very good at MC and rapping, he’s only 17 so he’s got way to go, but I’d like to get him out into the open world.  

You seem to have a tendency to drift off subject and talk about others rather than yourself! Come on tell us!
Ha-ha, bloody hell calm down! Stop drilling me. I’m not use to really talking about myself. I find it difficult.

Ok, let’s break it down. So you say you’re very family orientated. So when you’re not around your family, what do you do?
The usual thing any young woman would do.

What’s that?
Shopping, getting nails done, pampering, a few spa treatments and saunas here and there and of course partying and going to the club!

Going to the club aye?
Yeah well there’s nothing wrong with having a bit of fun is there? Before all this I use to go clubbing all the time, was probably more misbehaved but still. Being an artist can be very hard and sometimes you just need time to do something else and take your mind off things. It’s not often I get a chance to have a really good time with my friends, so doing all these things and going to the club is my way of spending time with my mates. I mean, surely people do realise that people such as myself have a social life, right? But don’t get me wrong when I’m out I can’t forget who I am and the fact I’m in the public eye, so I’ve always gotta make sure I don’t go and do something stupid, it only takes a few minutes for my actions to be all over the newspapers and bombarded by the press. I’m sure other artists can relate. But apart from that, I enjoy dancing and going fishing with my dad. That’s all I do really.

Fishing? I would have never thought it!
I’m full of surprises my love, Ha-ha.

Cool, I’ve been meaning to ask, what was it like for you as a child? Briefly.
Life was quite hard for me as a child. But there were good times also. I’m the eldest of three children, I have two younger brothers. We lived with my mum and my dad in a small flat in South East London. Apart from having hardly any space to breathe in such a small apartment, at that time life for me was great. It was fun, I was very ambitious, a very positive thinker and sang all the time!

Did people notice you had this huge talent to sing? Did anyone think you would make it this far?
Well yeah, everywhere I went I use to sing. I just loved it, and my family always had faith in me that my talent would take me far.
Name me three artists who have inspired you the most and why?
First on my list is Whitney Houston. She has an amazing voice and I’m sure despite her flaws she is an inspiration to many women. Next on my list is Michael Jackson! I Think as well as a good singer he is a fantastic entertainer. That is what I want to be, someone who really entertains their fans and brings something different to the stage, he really is the king of pop, but lastly someone more up my street and currently in the eye of the media, Beyonce! I think she is a great role model for many females out there, those of her own age and those who are much younger. I feel that Beyonce talks to her fans through her music and sends messages in which you’re able to interpret in your own way. I love her positivity and her energy, I think she is great!

Favourite colour?
Red. Very passionate colour

Favourite Food?
Spaghetti Bolognese!

The thing you’re scared of the most?
Spiders! Ergh.

One thing you want to achieve before you die?
There’s so many, it’s hard to only pick one!

Ha-ha! Well El, it’s been so nice having you in with us today. Hope you have a safe journey back and again, thanks for coming in!
Thanks for having me! Laters!

Front Cover, Final Production