RESEARCH AND PLANNING

SKILLS

I have developed my skills using Photoshop such as being able to use to better through all the different tools that were available to me such as the lasso tool, spot healing brush and more. Comparing my preliminary task to my final magazine cover, there is evidently a huge difference between the skills I had before to the skills I have now with using Photoshop.

My skills also improved because I was more familiar with the conventions of a real magazine. This was through all my research tasks on finding the conventions and forms of magazines and learning the terminology of how a magazine is laid out. This gave me information that I could use for my own magazine. The planning helped me to visualise properly how I wanted my magazine to look. Doing certain tasks such as creating a readership profile enabled me to think more carefully about my target audience and what is expected of my magazine with the genre I was doing. 

CONVENTIONS

From doing the research and planning tasks, I had more knowledge and understanding of the conventions of real magazines. From this I was able to produce my work more in line with professional practise and this is shown through my before work with my preliminary task and after with my final magazine. Although I did know where certain things were placed and how real magazines looked, the editing and the skill of making my own magazine look like real ones were improved on. 

PLANNING

From making my preliminary task magazine, I knew the kind of things I needed to spend more time on with making my own magazine such as the front cover and its masthead. This is because it is one of the most important things on a magazine cover as it stands out so much. However, when I got to actually making my magazine, my front cover took me a long time as I kept changing my mind. This shows that although I did plan how I wanted to lay out my magazine and what images I wanted to use, when it comes to the real things, so many things could change because it could look different to how you actually imagined it to turn out. I planned beforehand by creating mock ups of designs of my front cover, contents page and double page. I also looked up fonts which I thought would look good and related to my genre on www.dafonts.com as Photoshop did not have all the fonts I liked or would want to use. 

CONSTRUCTION

Photography Composition

My skills using software’s such as Photoshop and InDesign have improved since my preliminary task. With my photography composition, rather than just placing images all over the place, I played around with the images and decided what looked best on which page (front cover, contents page, double page spread. This is evident in my work based on where I placed the images. For example, my central image on my FC is not just placed in the middle but more to the right as this enabled me to put more text on the left hand side as well as making my masthead bigger which I was able to do as I didn’t have the image blocking it. 

My page layout and design has also improved because on Photoshop, I placed everything on different layers so it was easier for me to move things around and edit things later on if I wanted to. The layout and design was another thing I played around with. Putting everything on different layers helped me immensely as on my contents page, I kept changing things around and because I had so many text and images on it, the use of different layers kept things simple and efficient for me. For my double page spread I used InDesign because it enables me to line up my paragraphs much better than Photoshop which is shown through my DPS. 

PAGE LAYOUT AND DESIGN

Most of the fonts I used I had downloaded from www.dafonts.com and transferred onto Photoshop. Being able to do this enabled me to have a variety of fonts that weren’t just on Photoshop. Through this I was able to find fonts that were more suited for my genre to make my magazine stand out. With mise-en-scene, I appropriately chose the location, costumes and posing of my models making sure that I related it back to my genre. Using the different features on the camera and help of extra lighting, I was able to take nice photos for my magazine compared to when I took the images for my preliminary task. I put more thought into what I wanted the photos to look like, from the help of my research. For the content of the magazine, I looked at real magazines relating to my genre of RnB to help me improve my own magazine. With my preliminary task, I just guessed on the things that would be in a school magazine. I researched other double page spread articles and saw that many of them did an interview for the article which is where I got the idea from. This helped me to make my double page spread more like a real one. 

FONTS AND MISE-EN-SCENE AND CONTENT

Preliminary front cover VS real front cover

Preliminary contents page VS real contents page

FINAL DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD