Creative critical reflection

 How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

• How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
• How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
• How did you integrate technologies – software, hardware and online – in this project

Throughout my research for my portfolio, I came to the conclusion that most tech magazines such as 'Wired' use a mid shot or a mid long shot of a person which is exactly the route I took for all three; magazine cover, double spread and contents page. Tech magazines have a variety of lighting, it's either high-key light with bright colours or low-key lightning with undertones of blue and green, I went for the latter as I felt it conveyed they meaning that I wanted it too.
Unlike most tech magazines, I opted for low-key lighting to set a certain theme for the magazine
Unlike many tech magazines.
For the typography, I went with the conventional black, white, blue, green palette, I kept it in serif font because that is what I noticed in my research; tech magazines have serif font, to attract their audience on an intellectual level.
Unlike the conventions I added zero buzz words and went with a simpler approach.
The typography and the main cover picture tends to cover up the entire space however on the contrary, I choose to leave a lot of empty space behind to make it more aesthetically pleasing.
For the main coverline, I followed the codes and conventions and used a 'tech celebrity name' to attract a certain audience.
For the doublespread, I kept a certain coherence between the picture and the text, like all other media.
Since the magazines target audience is males aged 15-35, I choose a young adult to be the star of my cover, as I want my audience to resonate with the person they see, to be inspired by them, when they see Crypto at a shelf. Tech magazines are usually male dominated; this diversity creates richness and is healthy representation due to which more people of the same and overlapping social groups will be tempted to pick up the magazine. One of the major social issues discussed in my product is mental health and strive for change.
My doublespread is centered around a star who had a strive for change and made it happen. Zareens story also serves as an inspiration and humanises her and her success. It really is the embodiment of 'get up and work' It also sheds light on startups and encourages it's audience not to let their ideas go to waste.
In order to take my audience's input, I created a survey on Google forms, asking various questions regarding different aspects of tech magazine; the price, the coverpage etc
I concluded the results and went with what the majority agreed to such as: featuring a person on the cover rather than a subject. I also did a poll on my Instagram to land upon a name.
For distribution the print form of magazine will be available in populated and urban areas of Pakistan (Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi, Peshawar) at grocery stores, malls, book shops and stationery shops. An online copy of the magazine will be available on Crypto's website at the same price, excluding delivery charges.
For less populated areas such as Hunza: a minute amount of copies will be sent to the main market of a city.
Initially when I joined the media study course, I knew which photos were aesthetically pleasing and just a little idea on how to capture them, throughout this course I learnt, why certain pictures attract as, and what makes a good capture; angles, framing lighting, rules of symmetry.
After this course I was able to categorize different; mid shot, rules of third etc
Understanding all these rules lead to significant improvements in my photography.
Alongside my photography skill, my photoshop skills were ameliorated as well; our class started with the learning of basic tools that we needed for construction of our magazine, then we moved on to preliminary task and then finally out main portfolio, I learnt more about typography and editing and recognised the significance of it.
Before the production I did a survey on Google forms, since I don't own a DSLR, I took the pictures with my own phone: Samsung Galaxy S9 plus, for the editing part I used Adobe Photoshop CC, for the lighting I used an app called 'screen flashlight'