Production Review Week 5

When looking back at my schedule, I set out this week in my lessons to:

a: For this lesson I will revisit my front cover design, and much like I did with the University Blues, I will use the feedback I gained from it to make any edits I need to and think will be effective.

b: For this lesson I will be revisiting my York DPS, and again looking over the target audience feedback, making any final changes in terms of layout and basically finishing off the DPS.

c: For this lesson I will not be there, as I have to go on a driving course for the majority of the day, therefore I won’t be able to attend. So what I intended to do will be moved into my homework.

d: Project Monitoring & revisiting the contents page. For this lesson I will be writing up my blog and also re-reading it, making sure I have placed enough information and monitoring in my uploads to gain good marks and show a detailed progression of my production. I will also re-look over my contents page, as at this point nearly all my work will be completed.

In terms of what I have achieved this week: 

Unfortunately this week I did not follow my schedule at all. Because of the work I had done prior to the half term, most elements of my magazine were nearly finished, therefore I spent much less time going back over them. This was a conscious decision, as I tend to end up changing things that don’t need changing at all, so I haven’t thoroughly looked over everything individually, as set out in my schedule, but have skimmed over everything, gained some feedback, and have also decided to change my University article. This was the one element I wasn’t happy with at all; I knew it needed editing, and this became the main focus of my week, alongside looking over my other pages briefly, and gaining feedback from the target audience.

On Monday I made the decision to change the University Blues article. After looking back through all my work, I decided that it just didn’t quite fit. The side with the penguin books graphic was taking up far too much room, and essentially was wasting space. So during my free time I began editing up the DPS. I referred back to the previous version of this DPS used as a mock up from last year, and pulled some elements from that onto the current version. The most part of Monday was therefore spent simply puling around different elements, from text placement and image placement, to create a general template to then work from during the week. This pretty much meant that I had created more work for myself, where before this week would not have been spent doing this activity, but I want to ‘like’ my work, and be happy with the results, and the way the Uni Blues article was looking before this week was not something I would have been happy to hand in. So the decision to change it was the right one, and this was my main focus for the week. 

On both Tuesday and Thursday I continued with the editing of the University Blues article. I wasn’t in college on Wednesday, so no editing could be done, therefore the majority of the other two days were spent on the University Article. After I had pulled over the different sections I needed from the previous mock up from 2013, I began creating a structure for the page. This was where the page was by the end of Tuesday, so I had made pretty decent progress with it. 

The main sections I continued with on Thursday was the breakout box on the right hand page, mainly gaining secondary images from Google, as well as smaller measures such as moving images slightly for a better look, and making sure everything fit well within the pages columns and guidelines. I’m happy with the work I have done on this article, and it was 100% the right choice to change it. I love the title within the circles, which I took from my mock up and the general feel to the page is much better. It’s fuller, and there isn’t any wasted space, which there was in the previous version. This meant that by the end of Thursday the page looked like this:

It now fits more with my other articles, and if I’m honest I’m really happy with the way it’s turned out, which was my main goal for all the work I’ve done.

By Friday, I began looking over everything again. After skimming through each part, I finalized the contents page, the Cuts article, the Uni article and the front cover, which just left the York article. With everything else finished, I began re-visiting the York article, and with the deadline extended, I decided to change some elements. I spoke with my tutor, who advised me to simply rotate some of the text and images, and move the title text over, add in secondary image, and just bulk the pages out a bit more. This was so helpful, because although I did like this page, with the progress I had made on the Uni article in a short space of time, I thought I could maybe move some things around, and I decided to make these changes. These will be done on Monday morning, in time for the hand-in.

So by the end of production I am pretty happy with everything. Unlike last year, where I didn’t like my product, this year I really do like what I have made, and I think that may be due to it being targeted more at me, therefore I have been creating something with myself and my friends in mind, which helped with the design and layout.

For homework I set out to:

Homework 1: For this homework I will look over my Budget Cuts article, the last one to check over, and continue just like my other ones in that I need to check that everything works and that I have made it as effective as possible.

Homework 2: For this homework I think it makes sense, that after spending much of the past week looking over the work individually, I should see how the magazine looks and reads together.

Homework 3: My final homework will be checking over everything and getting some feedback before I start reviewing the work and typing up what I have done. Therefore I will go over the entire unit, and blog and see that everything is up to date, whist also asking some friends what they think of my magazine.

Overall with the homework I had planned to do, I did some things. I did look at seeing how the magazine read together, and checking my blog, but as with the schedule for the lesson this week, because I had made progress before half term, I didn’t look over the budget cuts article as homework, but instead did in lesson time. I basically spent most of the time looking back over the work and getting some feedback. The target audience liked most parts, especially the general feel of the magazine, and its branding and design, so this was reassuring more than anything to know that someone liked what I had created. That was pretty much the homework I did for the week, except editing the Uni article in my free time on Monday and Tuesday. I think this is because with a schedule, you can’t always plan things out fully, and expect to know that everything will follow a certain time and pattern. So, I’m not too worried that I haven’t followed the homework, as I think I can consciously decide for myself during the week what really needs to be done, and what needs priority over something else.