Evaluation Question 3: What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Product And Why?

Evaluation Question 2: How Does Your Media Product Represent A Particular Social Group?

Media Evaluation Question 2: How Does Your Media Product Represent A Particular Social Group? from Beth Sumecki

Evaluation Question 1: In What Ways Does Your Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

 Another way I challenged the typical form of real Rock media products was deciding to use a female artist in my double page spread and front cover. There are many famous female artists in this genre around today but they are certainly a minority. This isn't a form of prejudice it is just matter of fact, so using a female artist may be seen as challenging the stereotype because of it's infrequency. Furthermore, I liked the fact that having a female look confident and independent challenged gender stereotypes. My magazine is for both genders, and having a female on the cover of a Rock music magazine when females are seen mostly in fashion genres stands for gender equality in media.

     In addition, there is a total of 4 COLOURS used on my cover page, and 6 FONTS. It is a general convention of any magazine to keep these features to a minimum, here are some examples to illustrate:

                                          

 

One element of my double page spread that could be argued to be a development of classic conventions is the highlighted text, this was to signal the questions asked to the interview-ee. Having this feature of this text allows the reader to skim-read/skip to sections which interest them most. The slight development that I have made is adding in the extra space around this text to ensure that this separation element is translated, I also thought it looks more effective to have a tad extra white amongst the page. To show that this is not a challenge of a form/convention, here are examples of existing media that also use this feature:
                                           

Production: Final Outcomes

Production: Problems With The Double Page Spread

When creating my double page spread last year, prior to the first submission I had used a font from InDesign for the title and pull out quote of the double page spread:

  I really liked this font, as it was another visual element that literally represents connotations from my genre (destruction, again). It was also exclusive to this double page spread/article feature, highlighting it's separateness.

  However, when redeveloping my double page spread and making improvements, I realised this font was no longer available to use. Because I already had my written text, it didn't matter, so I proceeded in changing the background and colour schemes, I started editing the main article, adjusting fonts and sizes. However, whilst I did this editing, I had not realised that my font had been automatically substituted, and I had saved the file before I noticed this occurrence. I experimented with other fonts in InDesign, non of which I liked as they didn't fit in with my house style or motives. To work around this, I used a screen grab image of my double page spread with the correct colour scheme:

Then, I simply correctly adjusted my article and chose my final design outcomes for the main interview, screen grabbed, and then added this to the file image on Photoshop (with the improved page numbers too):

This however, resulted in the fact that my article is quite small and blurred. It's readable, but not of supreme quality. This factor also means that coherence has been lost with my other pieces, as the size of this font no longer corresponds with the size of the same font used on my contents page. This factor has been a frustrating turn in the project and I've found it difficult to compensate for the minor damage done. For instance, with the right hand text quote, I am not satisfied with the positioning and would change this if I still had the opportunity, I would also have experimented with the size of the title. However, I will re examine the contents page in comparison to the double page spread, to see if there is any changes I can make to add further correspondence. I could make the contents text smaller for example, but in capitals. Experimentation with this will be posted soon.

This slip up in my creation process has taught me that working with digital substance and media texts is delicate, and sometimes things can take turns for the unexpected. 

 Here is an update of my contents page, I have edited the size of the font to 2.5 pt and put the content in capitals. This is so the text is smaller but still legible, to correspond with my double page spread font size a little bit more. I also added in a few more contents listings, to make up the negative space created due to having a smaller font. 

Production: Double Page Spread Outcome Journey

Doublepagejourney from Beth Sumecki

Production: Contents Page Update

    Here is my contents page at the current stage in the project, here I am presenting two outcome that I have made. The only difference I have made is the size of the column separators,  and I did this because I thought this may look more authentic. However, I am unsure on this decision and will ask people soon for feedback to help me decided which draft is best.

Furthermore, after proceeding to work on my double page spread text, I knew from the beginning that I needed to have the same font used on the contents page to also feature for the double page spread to maintain my house style. But, after experimenting with font on the double page spread, 'Myriad Pro' worked much better on the text than 'Skia' (my contents font). This was because of spacing issues and over all tone, it just didn't seem to fit. Here is a section of my double page spread; the stand first, with both font outcomes:

  -Skia

- Myriad Pro

The two fonts are however quite similar when they are in small size,  so I decided to change the contents to feature 'Myriad Pro,' as the change isn't too significant and doesn't (in my opinion) harm the authenticity of the piece. Here are the results: