Evaluation and Reflection

 1 Week

On, Monday the 17th, I changed and replanned my FMP due to changing the topics. Such swift has been done due to the hardness of the ancient Roman and Greek history and sources which describes life and culture in those times, therefore I have chosen to change the topic to Martial Arts as I am not only part of this culture but there are more sources of research that are reliable than the previous topic.

Due to a whole preplanning, I have dedicated the first week to the remaking of the blog which consists in redoing research and a new mind map with ideas for my product, these tasks have been successfully and easily done therefore allowing me to kind of given early start to week 2, such early start has covered one out of four sports which I have to covered therefore only leaving three sports to do for next week.

2 Week

On the 24th of April, I started my second week of the project, which I can consider one of the longest and hardest I have had so far due to the amount of research and creative writing I had to do.

The research consisted of the filling of these 3 fields for each of the 5 sports: History, Synopsis, and Current events.

Writing the history was the longest task as each sport has a complex and back-and-forth history which was quite hard for me to summarize in a 4 paragraph magazine text, I also had to hold a balance between formality and informality because my target audience will be mostly in the young adults demographic forcing me to cut down on the formality of a documentary-like narrative due to decreasing the understanding and focus of the reader.

Another forced change I had to do was the field of "Current events" to "fighters" because of the lack of activity and sources in that particular sport and field, therefore I have selected to choose the field of fighters as there is more information and clarity rather than current events.

I personally feel much better with the fact that I got the research and writing part out the way so I leaving me now with only the making and assembling of the magazine pages. I have done one task early from the 3rd week due to having the idea and picture of a front magazine a week early, so I put it down so I don't forget it. For the 3rd week, I need to start designing magazine pages which I feel very confident how to make and also I might take some pictures before week 4 as I have the resources earlier.

3 Week

At the beginning of May, I started to work on my week 3 goals. The goals for last week were to work on some design and layouts for my magazine and then provide to craft template in Photoshop and continue it with InDesign, unfortunately, this week I have kinda split apart with multi-task outside the project, and also I didn't have my hand on Indesign while I was free therefore I am afraid that this week has been a 6/10 on the level of progress, however on week 4 I would have to wait for the responses from my models, therefore while I wait I will cover everything which hasn't been covered in week 3.

I have eased myself a little bit from week 4 by already doing a photo shoot of myself in a Ju-jitsu gi which would cover 1/4 sports pictures I have to do, also this photoshoot will help quite a lot by giving me enough content to make a concrete spread template.  

4 Week 

This week has been the strongest week in progress due to a change of plan based on my facilities shifting the difficulty of the assembly and gathering of material to easy mode.

The change of facilities was that because I haven't got a response from the models I have decided to put my ambition to practice and start to take pictures of myself in costumes according to the sports. This change of models to all on myself allows me to speed up the progress of gathering to one day which also allows me to edit the same day therefore completing 50% of the magazine, allowing me to tick it off and change my focus to the template designs

Coming to the recovery of the work that was meant to be done in week 3, I have also finished it and put it in the format of the magazine which seems like it comes out perfectly, also I have come up with the idea to add a special page with an intended purpose to be a demo of what place where you can collect a

My Final Magazine

Final Evaluation

From the start of my FMP, I have chosen to develop a magazine that covers the identity of a culture in society that is rooted in history.

My first thought was to develop a magazine that was aiming to inform and discuss the youth and elder about the culture, history, and identity impacts that ancient civilizations had on us as a modern society, the name would've been Past Identity, the first volume was about the roman and greek empires in the ancient times, the production of this intended magazine was quite easy to get textual context, however, due to the difficulty of getting primary research and original photography would've it end me up to go beyond the deadline, also there was a lack of resources of me taking good pictures to add in my magazine which is linked to the topics.

All of these restrictions have forced me to move to a different magazine which has realistic opportunities for me to gain content and materials all under the deadline date of the project, therefore to combat this problem, I have put my whole ambition and passion to restart fully my magazine's purpose and content.

My new magazine reflects my passion of aspect of my not only lifestyle but also something which I primarily can inform and write about in my magazine. The content of this magazine would be about the identity and culture of martial arts.

The name of my magazine is Martial Fanatics and it is the magazine's purpose and goal to inform and entertain the reader, these goals are reached by using the User Gratification theory.. .My target audience is people of any gender in the age gap of 14 - 30 who are fanatics and are rooted in the martial arts community, I have chosen such an audience because I find myself part of it, therefore, making it easier to research it and provide the right material for their satisfaction, this personal link between me and the audience will also boost the quality of the magazine.

This particular magazine has no influence from any other magazines which cover martial arts which makes it more unique and bonded to me and also standout from any competitor or similar magazines.

For the research type I have covered, second research for the content such as text and pictures however for audience research I have used myself due to having the same mentality, needs, wants, and lifestyle which are key elements when building the audience's body.

I have not covered any professional magazines because I wanted to stay as unique and personalised compared to big commercial magazines, therefore I have not identified any features or characteristics.

I have planned this project much better than the first magazine due to being more handy and accessible which made me to be more consistent with my work.     

For my magazine I have chosen to section my sub-topics of each topic into 3 segments, these sub-topics were to be history, synopsis, and current event. 

One of the problems was with the Current Event section which was meant to show a demonstration of news reports which are seen in the specific martial art, was that, due to the low income of sources and outdated news, I was forced to abandon the current event feature and change it to, Fighter which is still entertaining for the audiences because they can find themselves in the magazine by seeing someone which they look up to in the specific sport, I am happy with the outcome and the functionality of this change because it seems that it gives a much attractive feature for the audience according to the User and Gratification theory on relativity which explains that an audience could be captivated by seeing a piece of themselves in a media product.

When I made my project i have also kept in mind some most of media theories however the most fundamental theory which was in my mind was user and gratification theory, this could be seen in my directly into my magazine through the choice of selecting the fighters stickers for my magazine spread, after researching famous and the most idolised fighters by the martial arts community i have added them with good enough spread space in order to captivate the reader much more as he feels represented through the fighter therefore making him to have more enjoyment to read the page, also creating a closer bond between the reader and the magazine.

While crafting this martial arts fanatic, I have learned a lot from experimenting combinations of tools that softwares such as Photoshop and InDesign offer, softwares like these are a required elements in the media technological industry.

As an example of experimentation with tools is the use of photoshop bleending effects, this tool was a very essential discovery while looking at methods to create a gradient look at the text without taking out the text format and covert it to a object layer which limits many opportunities of manipulating the texture, text and the path which would dodge me a more direct steps and decaying in the quality of my intended gradient placement, therefore I have learned that I can add use the bleending effect to add a gradient overlay on the path of the text which is more accurately placed on the inner path of the text, therefore not only speeding up the process but also improving the quality of my magazine design and also motivating me to maintain that futuristic and brutalistic design in a consistent pattern.

The final product of the magazine has satisfy me by appealing to my initial ideas and going beyond on my imagined expectations due to the quality of the magazine being much better then imagined in my mind.

One of the features which has satisfied me the most is the spread layout design which is a 100% accurate to my intended planned spread. The use of a darker page with bold uniform text alinement and a high exposure, nearly like a polaroid effect, BW picture on the other neighboured page make it look exactly how I intended as it represent a retro aspect of futuristic look, this effect of the spread was my number one design achievement as it fits in with the wave of retro futuristic design in the world of media products, therefore attracting not only my target audience of sportsman in the community of martial arts but also the general public through the intrest of design appreciation.

Also another feature of my magazine which I very proud of its that I chose to go beyond of the conservative elements of a editorial magazine of just presenting information, therefore added some tabloid like features such as sticker collection which allows the audience to interact and build a bond with the magazine, the placement of this feature made me happy as gives my magazine a unique selling point which builds the success rate of my magazine among now days decline of editorial media texts such as newspapers and also magazines, therefore such effect makes me happy of my craft.