Preliminary Task Comparison

For my preliminary task within my AS portfolio I produced a newsletter cover for my high school (Deyes High), when planning this cover I looked at previous features of previous newsletters to see any common themes being shown.  From this I discovered that the colours (red, blue and black) where used the most commonly, I took this feature and applied it to my own newletter cover to stay within the conventions of this specific newsletter.  For this newsletter cover I used Photoshop as it has many features which can further my creative skills in the future.  I found these software differcult to use at first, however as I continued to use it, it begain easier to use.  Within this magazine cover I can see some positiven features which make it look semi-profesional.  The first feautre is the use of the school badge, this feature is professional as it shows that the cover is owned by deyes high.  Also within this newsletter cover I discovered that the images that I used make the cover look appealing, the images show a positive outlook on deyes, this makes it more appealing as showing positive images will increas audience appeal.  

However From this preliminary task, you can see that there are features which make it unprofessional.  For example the plain background makes the cover look bland and unappleaing towards audience and wont attract their attention.  Another feature which makes it look unprofessional is the placement of the text and images, the placement of these features doesnt look professional.    

This is my final magazine magazine cover for my AS portfilio, to create this I used skills from my preliminary task and enhanced them to create this cover.  As you can see this cover has features which are different from my preliminary task.  For example within my preliminary task, I noticed that a white background doesnt stand out for the target audience, so within this I made sure that the background was colour appealing do that I will be noticed more.  Also I took my skills for font type into consideration, I feel that the font I have used makes it look professional as the viewers can read it easily and will gather the information from it.  I feel that, unlike, my preliminary task I have placed the text and image in a suitable place to make it look professional.  I feel that the main feature which makes the final product better than the preliminary is the colour useage, In my preliminary used boring colours, unaware that this makes it less eye-appealing, I have learned form this mistake and made my final product colour to make it eye-appealing.    

Napster research

Napster was founded in 1999 by John Flanning. Shawn Flanning and Sean Parker.  The website was oringinally a peer-to-peer file sharing system but transformed into sharing mp3 file which caused problems within the music industry.  It was special for this reason as it was one of the first websites to do this.  Napster had over five million users with its first year of being released, and at the end of 2000 they had estimated around 75 million users.  Overall most users (aged around 14-30) found this software very useful as it aquired them free mp3 files which could expand to more people.  When Napster was at its peak it was said that 10,000 were shared every 5 seconds.  Some artist found Napster's method of transferring music a positive method of advertising and promotion.  The Beastie Boys used their official website as the launching pad to deliver several songs free to fans.  In exchange, the Beastie Boys required downloaders to give their e-mail addresses to be used in future marketing efforts.  However other artists found that Napster was 'stealing' there music and tried to shut down the system.  Artists like Madonna, who attacked Napster for having songs from upcoming albums available before release, have exceeded album sale expectations.  Artists had not authorized their songs to be released through Napster or another service, the potential for such a market was clear.  In July 2001, Napster shut down its entire network in order to comply with the injunction  In 2001, the case was partially settled. Napster agreed to pay music creators and copyright owners a $26 million settlement for past, unauthorized uses of music, as well as an advance against future licensing royalties of $10 million. In order to pay those fees, Napster attempted to convert their free service to a subscription system.