Portfolio Critique

As I have split my portfolio into two sections, I shall critique each section individually then conclude with an evaluation of the project as a whole.

The Cosmopolitan section of this portfolio is the part I have been the most passionate about. I enjoy writing for women’s lifestyle publications and with strong personal interests in the topics I have written on I think it has brought the motivation to research thoroughly and produce some strong and interesting final pieces.

My initial thought and idea for this project was to create my own version of a women’s lifestyle magazine, using Cosmopolitan as the inspiration. I decided against this idea eventually as I felt that there were some aspects of the magazine that I would not be able to complete efficiently enough within the time permitted for this project, e.g. full fashion shoots, celebrity features etc. I also felt that this would make my portfolio seem quite limited in terms of style and variation, so finally decided on just creating a few articles

I think I worked well to research and present my initial ideas into the vision I had created for them to begin with, or develop the ideas further to create completely different but stronger pieces.

I feel that my transgender profile piece and my ‘Back to School’ feature were the two strongest articles within this section.

After constructively using criticism from my tutor and peers questioning the substance and meaning behind the original article idea, I developed the ‘Back to School’ feature from a profile interview into an in-depth feature about the Open University. The outcome of this piece is a lot more satisfying and interesting than the original vision. The transgender profile piece has turned out exactly as I first envisaged it, in all aspects from the actual article to the InDesign layout of the magazine piece.

The other articles in this section, such as ‘Tip  Top Tanning’, ‘Perfect Wax’ online feature and ‘On a Budget’ fashion image features, meet all the criteria I aimed for however there is still room for improvement. I am happy with the way the two beauty articles turned out; however a more notable ‘expert’ would have been useful. Due to time and travel limitations, this was not as possible as I first thought. The fashion article matches the criteria of a fashion piece that could be found in Cosmopolitan, however I feel that if I had more time, I would have been able to create a larger feature with more information and greater substance.

Finally, the music review feature was one of the easier pieces for me to produce. I review albums regularly for fun and was able to transfer my skills from my extracurricular writing and develop them into a feature that would fit well in my chosen publication. Cosmopolitan do not currently have a review section so I had to attempt to work with the house style and create my own interpretation, which I think has worked well.

With the two images from the photo shoot that I edited, I feel I have displayed my editing skills well, however, time permitting, it would have been preferable to include a few more images to create a bigger selection and variety. I feel this is the weakest point of my portfolio.

Overall I am very pleased with the outcome of this section.

To show that as well as the feature and reviews writing displayed in the Cosmopolitan section, I wanted to provide evidence of my news writing ability. I created news section containing four articles aimed at newspaper publication.

I am pleased with the outcome of all four articles and feel that I was lucky enough to gain good quotes and information, especially for sports piece ‘You Blue It’, where I was fortunate enough to receive quotes from both football teams’ press offices. Although the information they sent me was reasonably limited, I worked well with what I was given and produced a good sports news piece.

I worked to the generic pyramid structure of news articles and felt this was effective in portraying the articles as I wanted.

This section could have been a little more extensive, but due to time I was unable to complete any more than the four articles I have produced.

I think the portfolio as a whole displays my strengths and has a good variety of work to show off my skills. I am also very pleased with the overall presentation of this portfolio. I would be pleased to show this to employers in an interview situation.