Mood Board

Initial inspiration is very important when taking on a big task such as producing a magazine, website and billboard. I purchased top successful magazines including Company, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue and also found clippings in fashion magazines from the inside of newspapers such as Stylist. I found the latest fashion trends, re occurring icons, inspirational makeup and accessories etc and put them together into a board that I can reference through my whole production. I also think it created a target audience for the kind of magazine in which I want to produce (teenage females).

A2 Coursework Brief Proposal

The pitch I have decided to do for my A2 coursework is the following- 

"The first four pages from a regional magazine together with two hyperlinked pages from the magazines website and a billboard advertisement for the magazine" 

I have decided to do this brief because it appeals the most to me as I have previous experience of making a magazines due to the production part of my AS coursework. However I think that this magazine will be more challenging as I am aware of the mistakes and errors I made so my aim will be to get them correct this time. A swell as this there is the added pressure of creating a hyperlinked webpage and a billboard advertisement which will push me to try new things and will boost my skills across multi-media. 

My initial thoughts are swaying towards a regional fashion magazine which uses models from the north east, promotes fashion/beauty companies located in the north east and also includes features on the best places to shop etc.I am passionate about fashion and beauty and believe that I have existing knowledge on the magazines already on the market along with the current trends which will aid me in producing a professional competitive magazine. My magazine will be largely focused on the Autumn Winter fashion trends as this will be the time in which I shoot the photos, find suitable outfits and also produce the magazine and by this time new trends will have appeared on the market. I will be focusing on appealing to a target audience of teenage girls aged 15 up to 30 that live in Newcastle, Sunderland, Durham and Middlesborough. 

My magazine will include a Front cover which will feature a model from the northeast that fits in the target audience age bracket in order to make it more appealing and relatable, on the front cover I will also have cover stories such as '50 must haves for your winter wardrobe!'. The second of my 4 pages will be a letter from the editor, so simply, a letter from me introducing everyone to the magazine and letting them know what I hope they get from it etc. Inorder to follow conventions I will make my 3rd page a contents page that informs the readers about what they can find out what stories and features are in the magazine. The 4th will be a double page spread with a feature on the up and coming fashions for Autumn and winter. 

My two hyperlinked pages of a website will be a website directly linked to the magazine and will allow for subscriptions to be made, read brief articles and enter competitions. My other hyperlinked page will be to a reviews board where people write comments about the magazine. 

My billboard advertisement will show an inside look to the feature story that will be found in the magazine, it will have the production companys logo, the magazine name and the websites address in the corner. 

Reflection Of A2 Coursework

Throughout my As year of media I enjoyed the work I did because it allowed me to explore different parts of media that I had only briefly looked into in my secondary school education. I learn new things at every stage of the coursework from the initial research and planning to the final production and evaluation as my skills improved dramatically. Upon reflection I feel that there is many things in which could have been improved such as the use of multi-media across the blog at all stages, I plan to improve this by including other popular media such as twitter, Facebook, wix etc on my A2 blog. I am very happy looking back on my coursework from last year as when I first started college I had never used photoshop or other sites like DaFont. However I do have some regrets as I focused on learning how to use photoshop for a very long period of time when I could have been experimenting with different house styles, fonts, images and backgrounds in order to give me the best possible final product. Looking at my double page spread, I am not happy with the standard of photo editing as it looks very un-proffesional, you can see rough edges where the image does not blend with the background I over edited the photo meaning it looks too blurry with too much focus being put on the eyes etc to sharpen their look. When taking photos for my AS work I will take this into consideration when positioning the model and choosing the location for the images, I will also spend more time on the editing the photos as they are a very important part of a magazine. Although, in my opinion, my font choices work well in some parts of the magazine such as the masthead, in some sections it does not fit with the general tone of the magazine and looks very rushed. I will also take this into consideration and will crucially analysis my work in AS to ensure that these kinds of mistakes do not go un-noticed. Comparing my preliminary task and my final product I can see that my skills have majorly improved over the year but my skills are not yet properly refined and I hope to do this next year. 

September 2013 - Preliminary College Magazine 

FEBRUARY 2014 - FINAL VERSION OF MAGAZINE