COP3 - Module Evaluation

BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN		LEVEL	06
Module Code	OUGD602
Module Title	PPP3

END OF MODULE SELF-EVALUATION

NAME	Samuel Hoh

1.     What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them? The COP3 module has greatly improved my contextual knowledge of the process involved in the production of men’s magazine covers. It has also highlighted the importance of context across all creative mediums. I have learned how to plan, structure, compose and format a dissertation. By doing primary research my communications skills from contacting people within the creative industry has improved. My academic skills have greatly improved and I now understand more academic conventions for example triangulating, referencing and quoting. By having to quote academics it has improved my ability to review the literature within the field of interest. I became interested in video production before the COP3 module but developed these production skills by creating the launch video for the magazine. I now feel confident that I have good basic skills needed for video production. The COP3 module has forced e to organise my time better. I developed a work plan before I began the module and although I found it hard to stick to the schedule it was definitely productive.

2. What approaches to/methods of design production have you developed and how have they informed your design development process? I have further improved my web design skills by creating the figure website in this module. Again I decided not to code the website as I think form my practice it is more worthwhile focussing on the design rather than the development. It is more productive in my opinion to focus on one element of web production. Although I enjoy editorial layout I don’t enjoy the printing process involved in College. This limited the design of the magazine I produced. I further developed my photography skills in the production of the magazine cover. It was challenging at first to get the shots I needed to fully explore the concept. It was difficult to make my armpit look like the figure of a woman and visualise Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze theory.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these? I found the concept development for the magazine enjoyable and I think this showed in the experimentation with photography. The concept made sense but in order to achieve the desired result it meant that I had to take images of my own body, which took a lot of commitment on my end and also my friend who helped me, take the pictures.  I was fairly close to abandoning the idea a few times but in the end pulled through and got the image I wanted. Because my time management was better in this module in meant that I was more relaxed when it came to handing in. I was ready well before the hand in time and this is something I will capitalise on in the future.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future? As I mentioned before the final print of my magazine contents wasn’t as professional as it could have been. This is something I will need to address in the future. I will research other printing techniques available and consider how I can print to the best of my ability within the college.

5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? Choose an appropriate print method. This will make my printed work more professional. I will actively seek help in the future in regards to tutorials for example. I will make sure that when I have a tutorial I will be getting the most out of it. I think I failed to do this within this module. This will inform my work and allow me to respond to feedback.

Practical response - Research

Primary Research - Public questionnaire responses

Survey monkey questionnaire

I will give a summary of the interpretation of the results. Survey Monkey provides a basic service which automatically interprets the collected data into a summary sheet. This allows me to reference the data in my study. The summary sheet also includes useful bar charts where available for 'category questions', questions that require one answer usually quantitative. The answer which are not available are because the categorisation is not compatible with the answer, usually qualitative.

"A hundred separate pieces of interesting information will mean nothing to a researcher or to a reader unless they have been placed into categories."

"We are looking for similarities and differences, for groupings, pattens and items of particular significance." (Bell, J, 1998:127)

29 people out of a possible 100 answered the questionnaires. I thought more people would answer from the Fiver.com marketing user feedback. In reality this was not the case, although 29 responses gives me enough data to interpret. The data from my initial analysis seems to useful information with only a couple of users skipping questions. Nothing really stands out as an objectionable response. In the future this will have to be addressed. It is possible that the platform used to distribute the questionnaires was not appropriate as the users were free to answer as they liked without a level of responsibility.

The first question:

How much importance would a celebrity(s) appearing on a front cover, have on you purchasing a men’s lifestyle magazine?

The answer is trying to find out how much importance the celebrity on a men's lifestyle magazine cover has on people buying a magazine. The answer are based from 10% to 100%. If I could go back and change the questionnaire I would design it so that it allowed the option of 0%, allowing the user to state that the celebrity had no influence of there purchasing decision. This question is slightly biased, because of this it could be said that 10% might also represent 0%.

-The most selected answers were as followed:

 70%, 80%, 90%, 60%, 50%, 100% and 10% received the least equal amount of responses.

-20%, 30% and 40% received no user selection.

Summary

You can see from the information that more people answered that they would be more influenced to buy a magazine because of a celebrity appearing on the front cover. A combined 82.76% people answered from 60% to 100%. 60% being more likely than not. I would say this would be strong evidence that the celebrity strongly influences the purchasing decision of the consumer. 

The second question:

Would you be more likely to buy a magazine with a sexy image of a female on the front cover?

The answer is trying to find out how much importance a 'sexy image' of a female has on the purchasing of a men's lifestyle magazine cover. The answers available are yes, no and maybe.

-The most selected answers were as followed:

Yes (62.07%), maybe (24.14%) and no (13.79%). 

Summary

You can see from the information that more people answered that they would be more influenced to buy a magazine because of a 'sexy image' of a female appearing on the front cover. I would say this would be strong evidence that the female body strongly influences the purchasing decision of the consumer. 

The third question:

Are you more likely to buy a magazine cover if you understand the context or the story that is being told through the main image?

The answer is trying to find out how much importance of context in relation to the main image on the purchasing of a men's lifestyle magazine cover. The answers available are yes, no and maybe.

-The most selected answers were as followed:

Yes (75.86%), no (20.69) and maybe (3.45%). 

Summary

You can see from the information that more people answered that they would be more influenced to buy a magazine because of a contextual image appearing on the front cover. I would say this would be strong evidence that contextual image strongly influences the purchasing decision of the consumer. 

The fourth question:

Would you be put off if you didn’t understand narrative (visual story being told) of the front cover image?

The answer is trying to find out the audience is 'put off' is when the context of the image is not understood. This question would be re-written if I could go back because the term wording 'put off' doesn't specifically address if the users purchasing decision would be affected. The answers available are yes, no and maybe.

-The most selected answers were as followed:

Yes (37.93%), no (34.48) and maybe (27.59%). 

Summary
You can see from the information that more people answered that they would be put off if they didn't understand the visual narrative a magazine cover. It is almost and equal split between the three answers which makes it harder to analyse. Again if the answer 'maybe' was removed it would make the results clearer.

I would say this would be evidence that the communication of the visual narrative should be strongly considered.

The fifth question:

Do shocking cover images on men’s lifestyle magazines:
Excite you, put you off, intrigue you, annoy you, don't really bother you

The answer is trying to find out how the audience is affected  by a shocking image cover. The term shocking has to be defined with the current popular culture, which is harder to define.

If this question was to be re-written I would used an example which I could now refer to in order to define the word shocking.

The answers available are Excite you, put you off, intrigue you, annoy you, don't really bother you.

-The most selected answer was:

Intrigue you (51.72%), followed by Excite you (37.93%), Don't really bother you (6.90%), Annoy you (3.45%) and Put you off (0%)

Summary
You can see from the information that more people answered that they would be positively affected by a shocking image cover. By combing the the to answer you find that 89.65% of people selected the positive response to a shocking cover image.

 I would say this would be extremely strong evidence that a shocking image cover influences the purchasing decision of the consumer. 

The sixth question:

If you were to buy a men’s magazine cover, do you feel it should be an indicator to the general content inside?

The answer is trying to find out how the audience wants the cover to be related to the content of the magazine. This gives an editor an understanding when trying to select a theme to explore on the front cover.

The answers available are Yes, no and maybe.

-The most selected answer was:

Yes (48.28%), maybe (34.48%) and no (17.24%).

Summary
You can see from the information that more people answered that they would prefer the image cover to be related to the content inside.

The seventh question:

What is your favourite men’s magazine cover of all time? (try to name the issue, if not, try to describe it)

The answer is trying to find out what are some of the responses favourite magazine covers of all time. This answer allows me to find similarities between chosen men's lifestyle magazine covers. This question is not a 'category questions' as it means that I have find the covers and manually find similarities and themes.

Below you can see the magazine covers that were chosen when the people left an answer. Out of the 29 responses 5 people failed to correctly answer the question stating answers such as "N/A, I don't know etc"

Analysis

 -7 covers contain females, 7 of the females can be denoted by the using the female form.

-15 covers contain males, 3 males can be denoted using the male form.

-18 covers denote 'famous', 'celebrity' people.

-24 covers can be denoted with the magazine masthead in the top quarter of the magazine cover

-11 magazines can be connoted as minimal.

-7 of the magazine covers could be said to be telling a visual narrative

-2 of the covers denote inanimate objects

-2 of the magazines are illustration based, 22 of the covers have used photography

-14 of the magazine have cover lines

-24 of the magazines place the main image centrally

The eighth question:

What’s men’s magazine do you read most often?

The answer is trying to find out what magazines the people who responded currently read. This answer require more research to process it it to useful information.

are some of the responses favourite magazine covers of all time. This answer allows me to find similarities between chosen men's lifestyle magazine covers. This question is not a 'category questions' as it means that I have find the covers and manually find similarities and themes.

Homme+

Colors

Esquire *2

Fantastic man

Complex

Monocle *2

Wired

GQ *3

Vice *5

New Scientist *2

Mens Health

Evo

FHM

Maxim

Muscle and Fitness

Deep

Anotherman

Bullet

Playboy

Primary Research - Public questionnaire

Survey monkey questionnaire

Another source of primary research will be from online questionnaires utilising the service ‘Survey Monkey’. The questions will produce quantitative data. The questionnaires will be sent out to an audience based over the social media platform twitter. Fiverr.com will connect the questionnaires to a high volume of Twitter followers (by paying members of the general public to send out tweets). The demographics of the Twitter users’ followers are specified by location, gender and age, which will inform the sample group. A Twitter user has currently not been selected. The reliability of the selected users’ demographic will have to be trusted as there is no readily available way for me to check every twitter follower.

The second method of data collected will be of quantitative data. This data will be analysed using Survey Monkeys online analysis that will produce question summaries in the form of bar charts and categorised responses. This will make the collected data visually easier to analyse and process. Survey Monkey only allows a user to respond once to a questionnaire, this will eliminate the chance of repeated user input, which is not appropriate.

Questionnaire questions