Evaluation.

Front Cover

To produce my product I used the programme Photoshop. This programme is advanced in designing things - such as front covers. It is brilliant for manipulating images and putting things together. Even though I had never used Photoshop before, I was able to cut out images from their background and design around and over it to produce my final piece. By selecting my main image and cutting it out, I was able to put the background on that I wanted, to make it look more attractive and was able to tie the colour scheme in with this image as there is a wide range of colours to choose from. All the images used are original images taken by myself of people around college.

As there is such a wide range of things to do to change your media product, I found it quite hard to find where every tool was and what each tool did, as there isn’t a description to go with the name. However, due to the many options, it makes it a fantastic programme to produce things that need a lot of work going into them and a lot of different elements. Once I figured out what the tools did, I was able to complete my front cover and I am happy with my final piece.

For my title I chose a font that would stand out and that was bold but not plain. I chose to write ‘GRADE’ and ‘GOSSIP’ in blue as it tied in with the main image of the page. The ‘A’ is red as I wanted it to stand out against the other two words so people would read it properly, and I chose red specifically because the back ground is a darker shade, as well as it being on the top of the girl in the main image, therefore tying all parts of the picture, title and background together. The images and shapes on the page each have a black background on them so that it would break up the colour scheme so the use of red and blue wasn’t too much. The writing used for the story titles are black and bold but quite small so that they stand out but aren’t too overpowering. ‘Pink’ doesn’t tie in with the colour scheme at all, but this is a special story, specifically to this issue so by writing it in pink helps to draw attention to the cause. The line at the bottom is faded so that it doesn’t draw attention away from the rest of the page, but it still sets it apart. This is used for things that aren’t there for the reader’s entertainment – it is use for the information specific to this issue.

Looking at the front cover, it looks quite simple, but when you start to notice that everything ties together and how things are placed and designed are all carefully thought about and in fact, a lot of work went into creating this product, and I am happy that Photoshop was able to do everything that needed to be done to produce a front cover that I am happy with.

Contents Page

My contents page was created on the programme QuarkXPress. Using this programme was a better option as the layout of the page was easily stuck to as you can set columns that you would like to use as a template. Whereas Photoshop is useful for designing and creating, Quark is easier to use for this page as more information goes into a contents page than on a front cover. The three original images used on this page were set out quite large as the contents isn’t used for attraction but used for drawing your eye to certain stories. Also, borders were used around the images to set them apart as they are all overlapped. Many different sizes of fonts are used as they are all positioned differently so that can be used to draw your eye in different ways, rather than everything being large, and nothing standing out. The font ‘Broadway’ is mainly used, and this is because it is bold but doesn’t take up too much space, it is interesting and it looks smart. I wanted to keep this page quite plain but interesting at the same time, so the colours used are mainly black on a white background with a hint of pink running throughout to tie in with an important story within this particular issue.

Using Quark was quite simple overall. Although I had never been on this programme either, it didn’t take long to understand how it worked. I used it mainly for text, and to position where I wanted things to go. I had done this already on other programmes in the past such as PowerPoint and paint, therefore picking up the way this works was quite easy.