AICE Media Studies Blog

Creative Critical Reflection

How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media context? The product engages with the audience through visual context. The title is the first step to engage the audience, it communicates the nature of the content of the magazine. The cover photo is an action shot , this is where the audience is originally engaged. The contrast between the title and the background also draws the eye of the audience in.  Engaging the audience in this way aids in distribution. In a real media context this magazine would be distributed through print and digital distribution. On the print side of the spectrum we will distribute the magazine at high school sports games and in the front office of high schools. On the digital side of the spectrum there will be a website. The website will focus on distributing pictures and video content. 

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues? The genre of this magazine is sports. This determines the conventions that we have to either adhere to or challenge. In our case we chose to adhere to them, using a sport like font , the feature article titles present on the cover, using the same sport like font throughout the entire magazine, etc. On the cover page we used the title "SOFLO SPORTS" which fits the standards of the genre. Many sports magazines contain a  word in their title that make it clear to the consumer the topic of magazine. In addition we had our three feature articles present on the cover as we noticed was a reoccurring trait during our research into other magazines. Finally for the cover, each of us made sure to use a dominant action photo. Another trait that we spotted during our research. Finally we added a border, which is a characteristic seen only in some magazines but we decided to use in order...

Cover revisions: We added a border and added dimension to the magazine title  Table of Contents: Totally redesigned format. This involves making the feature articles stand out more through adding corresponding pictures and blurbs about the article  Two Page Article: We changed the number of columns to 4 and instead of 3 and added a pullout quote. In addition there are new pictures..

How did you integrate technologies - software, hardware and online - in this project? For the project I utilized adobe Photoshop and InDesign to create the product. In order to create the first draft I did not use Photoshop, but in the second draft I decided to use it to both edit pictures and design the pages. With the use of Photoshop I was able to get specific with colors and add effects to the text. For example, on the cover, I used Photoshop  to make the title appear 3D and create a shadow. In addition I used Photoshop to create the border in a very specific green. I then exported this as picture and put it in InDesign to add the feature article titles . The reasoning for this is that it is much easier to work with text in InDesign. Essentially I used Photoshop as the  base for the design of my pages and then used InDesign for the text attributes.  For the table of contents  I used Photoshop to create the green blacks of the color to match the border on the co...

How did your production skills develop throughout this project? Production skills include time management, effective use of the programs and communication. These skills have improved throughout the project. For example I have learned the time each task involved in creating this project takes and how to plan into my schedule. I also worked on the programs such as adobe Photoshop and adobe InDesign while in class where I had access to them. This meant that I had to finish my blogging at home if I ran out of time in school. As far as the programs are concerned, throughout the process I had to learn how to speedily and effectively execute what I wanted to complete. This meant that I had to do some research into how to create a certain feature in Photoshop. Finally I had to communicate with the rest of my team in order make sure that our magazines were cohesive. This was extremely prevalent, due to the multitude of revisions we made.