Evaluation -- How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Ancillary Texts?

My brief required me to create the first four pages from an original regional magazine together with two of the following three options: a radio advertisement for the magazine, two hyperlinked pages from the magazine’s website or a billboard advertisement for the magazine. I chose to create a radio and billboard advertisement to accompany my regional magazine.

The combination of my billboard and front cover of the regional magazine is effective due to the similar design elements that they both incorporate. The colour schemes have been scaled back to black, white and grey with features of red (the accent colour) making the cover and billboard easier to read and look at and the scaled back colour scheme also lets the main images stand out. The main images of the hands used for both the front cover and billboard combined with the content of my article effectively because the main theme behind my main product and the ancillary texts is Black History Month and the image of the black hands connote/signify black people, Black Power and togetherness.

Secondly, the main product and the radio advertisement combined are very effective as they both feature the blogger Sena Eze. The magazines main article is based on an interview with Sena whilst the radio advertisement contains an audio clip of Sena promoting the magazine and its content including her article. The article is accompanied by images of Sena and her image is also used for the magazine’s contents page. The Black History Month theme is also evident in the radio advertisement where the magazine is promoted as “this month’s Black History Month special”.

Furthermore, the combination of the main product and both of the ancillary texts is effective as I’ve looked at real media products and I’ve used industry standard software and technology such as Final Cut Pro X, Digital SLR cameras and Adobe PhotoShop in order to replicate the quality of real media products. Similarly to real media products and campaigns, I’ve also kept elements of the design and the content the same across all texts so associations can be made between them. This results in all the texts working hand-in-hand to advertise and essentially sell the main product, which should be the purpose of the ancillary texts.

In conclusion, I found the process of creating the main product and the ancillary tasks challenging at first, as the process of making a billboard/radio advertisement and a magazine was new to me. However, research and analysis of real media products helped me create texts that are well informed and to a high standard.