Student Magazine | mishasillifant

Evaluation

For this assignment we were asked to work as part of an editorial team to produce a print and online magazine. As a team we had editorial meetings and discussions which were all held in strict time limits. We also had to choose three students to have job roles which they could volunteer for, these were Editor, Sub-Editor and Creative Director. Although these students took care of the design and articles as a whole each of us had to produce our own double page article which included factual writing, imagery and design elements to go into the magazine.

As a group I feel that we started off the process with the meetings well. I think this was because we are a small group so it meant we didn’t have to shout over each other to be heard and didn’t have our own individual conversations. Also the meetings went well as we were all asked to share our ideas one at a time by Josh, who led the meetings. This meant we all got a chance to share our ideas and ask any questions about other people’s ideas.

I feel as if our group decided quite quickly on the basics of our magazine. For example we discussed which of the four topics we wanted our magazine to be about either politics with a target audience of 16 – 25, trends with a target audience of 16+, Food with a target audience of 14 – 30 or health with a target audience of 16-30. We decided that we were going to base our magazine around the topic of food. This was because there are many elements of food that you can write about and food is something that appeals and is important to everyone. We thought that the target audience was a very wide range so there was lots of things we could include to try and attract every age in the audience. We decided against politics because there wasn’t much we could write about for it and us ourselves didn’t know much to be able to write an article on it. Also the target audience is a young age which are stereotypically the least interested in politics meaning they wouldn’t be attracted to the magazine. As a group we decided against trends as we weren’t sure what trends to include however the target audience was very wide meaning our content could have been varied but we felt we could’ve wrote more about food. Also with health there wasn’t much we could include, only how to keep healthy and what makes you unhealthy which wouldn’t be enough content to fill a whole magazine. These were very basic reasons for choosing against these other magazine topics so if we had more time I think we should’ve done more research into it before deciding. This research could have included looking at real magazines of these topics and also seeing the popular trends and politicians around at the time that we could’ve included.

However I feel from then we went too quickly into designing our own articles and didn’t decide on the front cover, contents page, back cover and page numbers meaning we had to have an emergency meeting to get this all decided in the last minute. This meant we were then rushing and had trouble that we didn’t need with getting everyone’s articles onto FlipSnack. If we were to do this assignment again I feel that we’d need to work more as a group and make sure we have everything planned and know exactly what everyone’s doing before we start designing. However we also realised we didn’t have much consistency in the magazine, apart from the side lines and tringle, as a whole so after looking at everyone’s articles we liked Pauls ‘Fast foods the disease and fruit and veg is the cure’ as he had two strips going down the middle that we thought everyone should include. We soon realised that this wouldn’t work as mine, Ellis’ and Josh Rogers already had things nearer the middle or backgrounds that couldn’t be covered. So this made us decide that every other page would have these strips to add more consistency.

Looking at our magazine I think it could be a successful magazine and easily sit on shelves amongst other food magazines. I think it contains all the correct content and enough variation of different foods to attract different audiences. For example the article about art will attract an audience who enjoy art, the article about sport will attract people interested in sport and my magazine will bring in audiences due to the celebrity endorsement. This means we are bringing in a wider audience than people who are just interested in cooking and food.

When researching my inspirations came from other food magazines, and I tried to think of as many ideas as I could of what most of the magazines content is or could be about. I chose 6 ideas for magazines which are already popular food magazines and analysed the front covers, these were Food and Travel, Easy Food, Baking Heaven, Healthy Food Guide and Our Best Desserts. I analysed the front covers and their websites to see exactly what they included and what I thought could be added. Thinking that this could then give me ideas of what I could write my article about, having an original ideal but then adding my own things into it to make it different. For example with the magazine Healthy Food I suggested that they could also give the cheapest healthy food as people would be more likely to want to buy healthy food if they also knew the cheapness of it. Also a suggestion I wrote of something that could be added was having unusual healthy food that the buyer might not have heard of before so they can be healthy whilst trying new things this could include things like exotic fruits. This would attract audiences as they would be interested to try something that they’ve never had before, to be different and impress other people with.

I thought that all of these ideas that I had weren’t overly different to any other food based magazine so I decided to take a whole other approach on it. I thought of ideas such as famous chefs or restaurants. This is because many people will buy a magazine just because of a celebrity that features in it so I wanted to include the most famous chiefs. I decided these chefs were Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver as they’re the most popular however they are very different and have different followings meaning two different audiences will then be attracted to the magazine.

I feel throughout this project I could’ve managed my time a lot better. I spent too much time researching into my topic that it left me with very little time to write and proof read my article. I also wasn’t sure how to structure my article so spent a lot of time rewriting when I could’ve been going onto the design element as I ended up rushing this due to the small amount of time I had left.

My initial idea was to have two separate pages about the chefs and write what their favourite meals are so people could make these meals. However after researching I realised that it was going to be very hard to find to find one meal which was their favourite. This made me change my idea to just to write about them, their personal lives and history yet this wasn’t very unique as people might already know that or it’s something that they could easily just find out for themselves. I then thought about seeing if they had come in contact before or had any feuds. After researching this I found a few things that the chefs had said about each other that people might not know and find would find interesting to read.

I think that my article included a lot of factual information, however I found it a challenge to put this factual information into a blog style article. This is because I found it hard to write in a causal talking to the audience style whilst including facts. I decided to call my article Ramsay Vs Oliver as these two chefs are mostly known for their last names and people will know exactly who the article is about by reading just their last names. Also I decided to have a slogan as ‘Famous Foods, Famous Feuds’ as it will attract audiences to it as they’ll want to find out what the feud is and why the article is suggested to be like a fight between the two by the use of ‘VS’. However I don’t feel as if my article matched the titles as I didn’t create enough of a battle between the two and this is what the titles suggested.

I feel like I used a fairly bias tone in my writing by saying many more positive things about Jamie Oliver than Gordon Ramsay. I also started the article with “Jamie Oliver, not to mention his good looks is one of the world’s most famous chefs, best known for his loving personality, house hold meals and TV programmes” and starting Gordon Ramsays with “the hot head fiery chef” which is a hot more negative. To have improved my article even more I could’ve increased the bias tone even more and added more of an argument between the two backing them up with my opinions.

The two chefs both have very different personalities and are seen in different lights to many people. So my first design idea was to have a picture of them going down either side of the page with the text in the middle. However I thought this was a bit plain and I wanted to get across the different personalities and how they are seen to audiences.

I edited horns onto Gordon Ramsay by downloading an image from the internet of horns, using the magic wand tool I removed the white background and then saved the image as a PNG to finally place on the picture. I did this as horns are associated with devils, hell and something evil and to the general public he isn’t seen as a nice person and someone who is shouting and swearing a lot of the time. However Jamie Oliver is seen as a nicer person with a loving personality with a more relaxed style so I decided to edit angel wings onto a picture of him. This is because angel wings represent heaven and nice things. Heaven and hell contrast with each other suggesting that these chefs also do as they are very different and are also having feuds between one another encouraging the reader to find out why they’re seen in different lights and what the feuds are. I also wanted to include this as the visual element will attract the younger part of the target audience and make them more engaged with the article.

I edited the pictures used on my magazine for copy right reasons. The pictures I first downloaded before I edited them were from Google Images meaning they are owned by someone else and can be against the law to use. The law that governs copyright in the UK is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998. It’s important not to break these laws in case it’s taken to court and requires further action to take place.

I wasn’t pleased with the way my article looked as when the edited pictures went onto InDesign with my article also written the pictures were stretched if I put them where I wanted them. I didn’t think that this looked very professional and wouldn’t be industry standard because the pictures are hard to see. However I did like how the page looked with the pictures on the outside of the page and the article written towards the middle so I decided to keep this idea of having text one side and the picture on the other. There was no way I was going to be able to keep the pictures at the sizes that they were without them being stretched so I would have to make them bigger meaning they wouldn’t line up with the text. I didn’t like how that looked so I decided to take a whole other approach with adding a background behind the two chefs. I thought that this would then definitely make the article stand out more and become more eye catching and also add more information about their personalities/characters. I wanted to stick with the theme of heaven/hell and good/bad as this is how they are represented especially within the media. This made me decide to have flames behind Gordon Ramsay and a bright sky behind Jamie Oliver. Bright colours are associated with happier and calmer things, just like the way Jamie Oliver’s programmes are, with the relaxed and calm style. Whereas Gordon Ramsay has a more fiery atmosphere and temper which is shown throughout the majority of the programme withone of his programmes also being called ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ associating him with hell/the devil.

My Photoshop stills have been improved during this project due to experiencing different tools to use. I cut out two pictures on Photoshop using the lasso tool, one of Gordon Ramsay and the other of Jamie Oliver so they had no background and turned them into a PNG this meant that I could then place them on top of a background. I chose a fiery picture as it included a black background and black represents darkness and evil which was the representation I was trying to get of the chef. When I placed my PNG onto the background it was very zoomed in and only half of Gordon Ramsay’s face could be seen. However I thought this looked affective and made his face look to have more of an angry expression, for him also to have direct eye contact with the audience who read or flick through the magazine drawing them in to read it. I did the same with the Jamie Oliver PNG and also had it zoomed in so only half of his face could be seen. My original idea of this was to have the pictures on opposite sides so I could join the faces together, but lining them up was a lot harder than I intended it to be. I also thought about the final product and how when it was printed there would be a crease down the middle meaning the faces wouldn’t match up properly and would be at a bent angle.

I still really liked this idea but knew it wouldn’t work I decided to keep the half face theme but on the opposite sides. This can be done with these celebrities because people will know who they are just by seeing half of their face. I decided to place the text in the middle going around the edge of the pictures making it flow along the outline instead of just going straight down. I also wanted the colour of the text to be contrasting and so it could also be seen over the background.

With my design I also I noticed that towards the bottom of each page the text was lost and couldn’t be seen. I played around with many colours but none of them fit with the background so I decided to keep the top the same colour and then changed the colour of the text at the bottom. I followed the text around by the clothing that they were wearing so it was only a different colour on where it couldn’t be seen. I kept my font the same throughout my article as I didn’t want it to be all different and look too over the top.

When looking at my double page I didn’t think Jamie Oliver was edited to a good enough standard as you could still see a bit of the background in between bits of his hair. This didn’t look to a professional standard as the picture is meant to look real as if he is actually there and not been stuck on. I edited the picture again in Photoshop by zooming right in and using the rubber tool on the PNG layer to rub away the excess sections and put it back on my article. This made it look a lot more natural and realistic by tiding up his hair.

My main intention for my article was to have both sides of the argument, so the good and bad things each chef has done so people can make their own opinions on them. I also had an intention to put information in that was unusual and what not many people knew about them both and I think I achieved this as when others proof read my article they said they learnt something about them that they didn’t already know. I also wanted it to stand out and I feel as if I have achieved this by the backgrounds and the pictures of Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay being straight on and looking at the audience. However I feel that I could’ve added more design element to my page to make it more my own and unique.

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