Evaluation

Evaluation for professional project, 'Recession Reactionary'...

For my professional project I chose the Recession Reactionary brief. I felt that this brief related to my own specialist practice as after graduating and gaining the necessary experience I plan/hope to work within a magazine, and this brief has enabled me to explore, learn and gain new skills in this area and to put them into play by creating my final magazine. As this project is slowly introducing me into the magazine world, it has made working on this project more interesting for me as I have had the self-motivation and interest to learn and progress my skills further in this area to better my experience and knowledge, when I finally enter the real working world. This is a huge area of interest for me so I have been keen to make this the best I can with the tools and help provided.  I have managed to enhance my knowledge on magazines, magazine layouts, Ethical & Sustainable fashion, styling and the Recession as well as having improved my computer and visual presentation skills.
 

Within my learning agreement I had originally added “I plan to include various interviews and facts about designers/companies that use either recycling or an ethical approach to fashion. I will speak to these designers/businesses to find out what their aims/missions are for their business, what they are doing to survive the recession, what they predict will be next for fashion and which direction they feel they are headed towards next. I also want to find out how they reach and approach their target audiences, and how they meet the needs and wants of their consumers by providing them with that specific service whether it is fashion with a conscience of breathing life into the old. I will display these findings within my magazine over 4-6 pages. If for any particular reason I am unable to complete the whole magazine I plan to hand in this section as the ‘4-6 images of A4 size’ for assessment.”

Unfortunately this has been an unsuccessful approach, Initially I had tried to send out various questionnaires to a number of stores asking them about the recession and for those that it related to, being ethical. As the recession is such a private and confidential matter, it was impossible to get the larger brands to talk about how they were affected, what their opinions were, and their tactics for survival. I did have 2 smaller companies respond, but this was not enough to base any valid research upon. Instead I had to abandon this part of my original plan. I decided to mainly base my magazine on where I thought fashion was headed towards next after the recession as this was part of the main brief, I chose ethical fashion which I based this decision on my own personal opinions and by research I had gained from my questionnaires to friends, family and others. Not having the research I originally was looking for has not been too much of a setback for me, I feel I have put across more of my own thoughts and feelings into this magazine rather than basing most of my text on information I have been given from other sources. This may have resulted into a duller magazine spread, which is what I need to avoid when trying to attract my particular target audience.

For the main basis of my magazine I instead concentrated on one brand ‘Annie Greenabelle’ which I had come across when doing my initial ethical and Fair trade brand research. I felt this brand was well suited to my magazine as it is young, fresh and vibrant. I did also try and send out my recession and ethical questionnaires to this company but with to no avail. I managed to find some information on the business from their website which I then translated into an easier and lighter context adding my own thoughts and opinions about this brand into my spread. This helped to make the magazine feel more natural, and as if we (the magazine) are on a close basis with the brand. I also based my photo shoot on this brand, so this ended up being a large section promoting this particular brand. I felt that this came across well, and even though I had troubles contacting designers and businesses about themselves, I am happy with the outcome of this Annie Greenabelle section. I was also planning to do another photo shoot to be included within my magazine after the Easter break, as I wanted another scenario and different garments to add variety into this section, but this fell through with the photographer. I could have used these photographs to add another dimension to my magazine, but it would have meant lots more pages needing to be added to go along with that particular theme, which may have made the magazine as a whole a bit disjointed, and I would have probably ran short of time.  This has not affected my end result, as my magazine flows well and feels like a finished product, with enough material. 
 

The written brief stated that our outcome would be a 4-6 page spread, which I found to be quite limiting for showing off my skills, so I decided to go for something more challenging, and agreed with tutors on attempting to make ‘as much of a magazine’ or a ‘whole magazine’ depending on how my time was going. This was a large project I set for myself, but I have managed to complete the work I set for myself, with each page being as strong as the next, which I am very pleased about.
 

I have managed to meet all my deadlines on the critical path analysis that I set myself at the beginning of this project, with all proposed dates met exactly on time or very close to that date. Doing the critical path has helped me to manage my time well, clearly, and easily. I set the dates realistically, so that they were all achievable.  I set enough time for each task to be able to get done with time to spare in case of troubles that may have occurred, which thankfully was not anything too serious.
 

This project has been hugely helpful to me, and has given me an opportunity to express my creativeness in a way that I may not be able to do straight away or for a while when joining the industry. It has given me the chance to do what I want and what I enjoy. I have had initial practice to playing and learning about layouts, studying magazines, continuously learning and experimenting whilst using computer programs such as Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator, which are key and essential programs when wanting to go into this area of work. This magazine will be something that I can be proud to show at interviews to impress potential employers, showing off the skills I have learnt and progress made. This project has generally been a pleasure to work on, and I have enjoyed every minute of it.