Evaluation

My magazine uses the forms of codes and conventions of a real life magazine because the front cover has:
cover lines down the sides,  3-4 simple colours such as mine are blue, black and yellow, the masthead makes the genre very clear. It also has featured articles advertised on the front cover such as school trips. The main cover line is a bigger font than all the others to make it stand out as the main story. It also includes a website and issue date and a main image. However my magazine also challenges the codes and conventions because it does not include a bar code.

I have already used photo shop to make previous magazines back at GCSE level, but i developed new key skills during the production of my front cover. Also i used a new format called Quark which i have never used before. I used this to design my contents page. I learned new skills on this such as how to re size the picture to fit into the box and to put a shadow drop on the boxes which hold the numbers of the page in. I found Quark easier to use than photo shop because all the tools were really simple to follow and there are guidelines to stick to so everything comes out neater.

The strengths and weaknesses of my product vary. Some strong points of my product are; the title, i especially like the title because it makes the genre very clear and the font it is used in is cursive which is what most school students are taught to write in. Another strong point about my magazine is The contents page structure. I think it looks very professional and the theme of black and yellow makes it easier to stand out what page you are looking for. However a weakness about my finished product is the main image of my front cover. The colour writing to go over the background was very difficult to choose as the background its self was different colours. Another weakness about my product is some of the photo's were a bit rushed and i think if i had more time i would of got a better quality of photo's. A weakness of the new media technologies i used is on photo shop the magnetic tool is very difficult to use. A strength would have to be how easy it is to make something look professional on Quark because of how easy it is set out.