Beauty Fool evaluation

Evaluation

During this yellow week I had to write and design an article for this is FEED magazine. It had to respond to the theme obsession but we were also allowed to relate it to any theme from sport and health, to dance, to fashion and design. We were also able to write from a personal perspective or react to an ongoing situation in the world.
Working in small teams I followed creative writing techniques, understanding the style guide of FEED and to be able to analyse a range of target audiences and styles of journalism. My article had to be approximately 500 words. My theme was about plastic surgery and how girls want to change themselves because either they don’t like their body or because people tell them their isn’t the right way for a particular reason. I also used a personal experience within my article as I came very close to having plastic surgery to get into modelling.
Looking at headlines helped me to think about attracting the reader before they even read the article itself. My headline was Beauty Fool as it relates to Beautiful but they are a fool because they listen to other people and want to change when they have nothing to change because they are beautiful in their own way.
When I came to designing my article I decided to take a photograph of myself and use the perfect grid to show not everybody can have what they call the perfect face to be beautiful. I chose to use black and white throughout my design to emphasise the face and make up isn’t needed to make you beautiful.
If I was to do it again I would like more time on my designing as I think personally I had too much time on the writing itself.

Problem with uploading

I cannot upload a printscreen of my spread as I saved it to my hotmail and it will not open on my computer.

Evaluation

Evaluation.

For yellow week I decided to choose journalism, the brief was based on obsession. We first had to write what we are obsessed with on a sticky note and mine was my blackberry. So then we got told to a write 500 word draft about our obsession then when we returned we would edit it and so forth. The article would be published in the Feed magazine. I based it on overall technology so I could then include social networks in and it would be able to relate to a lot more people than just blackberry owners.

I wrote around 520 words explaining how obsessed I am with technology. I enjoyed writing this article as my fingers where just typing away because it was personal to me about my previous and current happenings. My first heading was obsessions but after going through it with my group I then changed it and went through a lot of different headings from technology; a constant obsession to Yesterdays black and white... tomorrows animated but I finally decided to choose another heading which was “has tomorrow already come?” as I thought it was effective and would make the reader want to know what the article was about.

While using the InDesign program for the first time I found difficulties on how would be a suitable way to lay my article out across a spread. After many changes and a bit of help from a graphic student I then created the layout. I inserted a picture I took earlier of my hand using my blackberry and a Facebook homepage as the background to make it clear what my article was about.

If I could do this over I would probably think more about the layout and try many different layouts until the perfect one.

After this yellow week it has definetly made me more assured doing magazine or fashion journalism at uni is the right choice because when i had my final article written and how easily I found to write, I enjoyed it.

Image i used on my final layout

This goes perfect with my artice as I took it and it is of my blackberry and a facebook page background which is whats my article is about.

Has tomorrow already come?

Technology has taken over my life. Whether it’s a text message, phone call, Facebook or my Blackberry Messenger, I just can’t get enough.

Over the years I’ve always kept up with the latest social networks, I’ve gone through Piczo, Myspace and now currently I’m using Facebook. I can’t go a day without checking. I feel lost without it, like I don’t know what’s going on in the world. I could stay on for hours…well, actually I do: talking on Chat, updating my status about how my day’s been going so far and what I’ve been up to. Even a quote from a song and especially uploading pictures to keep my Facebook profile current. It’s like an addiction of knowing what everyone else is doing, quite nosey really, but I just can’t help it. Even when I’m watching television my Facebook is just on next to me to see if I get any notifications. Also for quick access I have an application on my phone for Facebook, which notifies me when someone tries to contact me.

My Blackberry: yet another way technology has taken over my life. Sleek and efficient, I’ve had my phone since December 2010 and since then it has never left my side. Everywhere. Anytime. It doesn’t matter if I’m going to the bathroom to use the toilet, brush my teeth or have a bath, eating, talking in person to a friend, my phone always comes first. If it pings on Blackberry Messenger I will answer it in the same few seconds and when I don’t get the same in return from the person I get frustrated. If it came to it and I was running late and when I got to the bus stop and realised my phone wasn’t with me, I’d run all the way back but I wouldn’t do this for my bus pass I’d pay, but I always make sure before I leave I have it, like my phone is first priority because my day wouldn’t flow without it. With no communication and no music on the bus to listen to, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. From making too many phone calls (when my bill came in I went over my 1200 minute barrier and my bill that would normally cost me £35 I faced myself having to pay £143!) because I have a problem with having endless phone conversations and not checking the amount of minutes I have left.

Even though this probably isn’t the healthiest obsession as it is scientifically proven that computer screens can cause bad eyesight, and phones can give off radiation, which can make you sick, I have become so obsessed that the consequences don’t bother me.

So now everyone who reads this will now know my obsession is technology and my problem is that I can’t overcome using technology in my everyday routine. The scariest thing of all is that technology gets bigger and better daily. So who knows in the next year to come how much technology I’ll be relying on and which gadgets I’ll be carrying around in my bag?

-Kerlisha

Beauty Fool

This is my final magazine article. I have used my own photograph and the perfect grid for my imagery. I have also stuck to black and white imagery and it fits in with the text that i have used.

Final layout

Based on my thumbnail sketch layout I went on to build my final spread. It worked out better than I thought I would and the image really screams 'obsessed psycho'.

Evaluation

For this project I was to write an article and create a spread based around the theme of Obsession. I started off with a mind map of obsession thinking about what would make to good topic to focus on when writing the article.

Class exercises such as comparing newspaper headlines helped me to think about audience and style of writing. I wanted to keep the reader in mind I so that I could understand the point of view that I was trying to communicate to.

When it came to actually writing the article I found it quite difficult to pinpoint what an obsession is which itself became the argument for my article. I wanted to look at what exactly can be called an obsession and what is just a mere interest. I mainly researched article on the Internet for my information.

When it came to designing the spread I drew a few ideas for layouts and selected the best one. I went straight to working on it rather than researching examples of layouts; although this makes my layout idea more unique.

At first I wanted to use an image that showed the contrast between extreme and minor obsession but I realized that this image concept would look cliché so I decided to focus more on the extreme end using an image of an actually stalker – Ricardo Lopez, featured in my article, who had stalked Björk in real life. I photographed it from the computer screen to add more realism and shock as it was a close up image which creates an intimidating effect.

Overall I think that my final spread works although my article could be more creative with the use of facts and quotes.