Evaluation of front cover and contents pages.

My magazine front cover and contents page followed both codes and conventions. My front cover was produced by following each one of the codes and conventions and I believe if I have done this effectively then it will look like a normal magazine. With my front cover I also produced it by following the rules of codes and conventions and I believe that if paired with another magazine it would differ in appearance but the codes and conventions of it would match perfectly.
I produced are front covers on Adobe Photoshop this allowed me to edit pictures in the way I wanted to and in the right way. Adobe photoshop is a good software when producing a front cover of any kind. Nearly all magazine produces will use this software and it is probably one of the most populist kind of editing software there is. Using the codes and conventions to help produce my magazine allowed me to know whether I was doing my magazine right and it made me feel more confident that I was doing it right because I believe that if I followed these codes and conventions then my finished product would match real magazines. The codes and conventions of magazine front covers are basically things that occur on every magazine, these would consist of the name of the magazine generally being in the top left hand corner and they all have an issue date and price. Each magazine will have one main image/ storyline on the front cover with other sub stories around. They usually have bright colours of writing as it will stand out more to the audience and as there are so many magazines on the selves in shops the magazine will have to look the best and be the most eye catching to ensure that people buy their magazine.
With my contents page I used the software Quark, this allowed us to follow the right structure to how a real contents page would be set out. Quark really helped me to know how to set my page and where I should fit my columns. Quark is generally used mostly with contents pages of magazine as the editors probably believe that it is the most helpfullist software. However Quark was hard to understand as I had been using photoshop so much and getting use to that software, but once I had got the hang of it, it all became easy. Also I used the codes and conventions of Magazine contents pages to help me understand what I was doing, having the list of codes and conventions of the contents pages really was a big help, it allowed me to realise what I was doing wrong and if I had done something something wrong which I didnt know about I just had to look at the codes and conventions of magazine contents pages and then that would help me. Having the list of codes and conventions ensured that I produced the contents page up to good standards and allowed me to feel confident about what I was doing. During the process whilst using Quark I realised that it is a much different software than photoshop, it seemed much harder to understand as it didnt have the same tools to use. Overall Quark was a big help whilst producing my contents page.
As it was the first time that I did digital photography with a good understanding of it I enjoyed it very well. It was hard to make sure that you had the correct shot and making sure that it was done in the correct way with lighting and other things. Doing the digital photography was enjoyable as it was my choice how the pictures were set out and how the people in the picture were set. Digital photography made sure that the pictures I was taking had a good quality on them, for example they don't blur out things and produce very clear shots. Digital photography wasnt hard to understand only the type of shot thaat we had to do was.
With the audience feedback it was very useful as if I had been criticized for what I had done it was constructive criticism, this allowed me to know what I needed to improve in order to have a good front cover page and contents page. With the feedback from the front cover I had a couple of points. Firstly, was that it was all to bunched up together. With this point I only needed to spread my work out over the page abit more and then it looked much better as it had space. Secondly, people said that the colours were good as they are all matching and go together, they then followed on by saying this would be a good eye-catching magazine. Lastly, they said about how big my main image was so I just re-sized it to the perfect size which made the whole cover look better. With the contents page people said that the columns weren't big enough that they need more space in them, so I made them bigger and moved some things around on the page. The next point was that one of the pictures didnt look good enough for the contents page, so with the point I contructed it by going and taking another to picture and making it look good for the right part of the magazine. With the feedback I found it helpful as I might of had a finished product that was no where near ready to go as it didnt follow the correct codes and conventions so with people I know making constructive critism about my work was a very big help.
To conclude, my strengths out of this task was probably using photoshop, as I enjoy manipulating pictures that I have took as I find it interesting. Whereas my weaknesses from this task are probably using Quark because I didnt feel confident using it which reflected back on my attitude about how good or bad my magazine contents page was. Knowing that I couldnt use something very well made me feel like giving up but as I carried on throughout the task I got to understand it more, which made me feel more conifdent about doing my work.