- Question 7 Draft-
- 1. Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
- 2. Development- Font scheme I developed my use of font because as we can see, in my college magazine I did not follow the rule of maximum 3 fonts being used. One of the biggest mistakes I made was having a different font for ‘Contents’ because it did not look like it was part of the front cover. However, In my music magazine, after experience I figured out that using the same/similar font would look a lot more special so I used the same font without the spikes. Also, the font of the skyline matched the font I used throughout the magazine. However the skyline font on my college magazine was a completely different font compared to the rest of the magazine. In addition, as we can see the word ‘STYLE’ covers the models head in my college magazine. I believe not having any writings covering the models face made my music magazine look a lot more professional. Overall I learnt that using more than 3 fonts made my college magazine look unprofessional whereas using less than 3 made my music magazine look a lot more put together and more professional.
- 3. Development- Photography I developed my photography skills because as we can see, in the first image the model looks like a typical person that I stopped in the college to take a picture of however in the second picture we can see there is a lot of work behind it for the picture to come out looking professional to that extent. The reason the first image does not have a great quality is because it was taken on an IPhone 6, whereas the second image was taken using a DSLR Canon Camera. The quality plays an important role as many people just look at the visually pleasing images before picking up a magazine. Also, I did not do any touch ups to the first image which I used in my college magazine however I completely transformed the second image by adding tattoos, piercings, and different clothing including a light leak on top for it to suit the colour scheme of my magazine. In addition, as we can see my model looks like she was forced to smile and this is because the surrounding area was not a professional place as the image was taken in front of a wall. I developed my photography skills as for my college magazine I was in a studio allowing me to take an image using a white drop. Also, the models facial expressions and body language was planned and looks professional because it reflects the genre and it does not look forced because it looks natural whereas the college magazine image looks forced.
- 4. Development- Colour Scheme I developed my colour scheme because in my preliminary task, I did not know about the colors that complemented each other however when starting my music magazine I was taught a website called color.adobe.com which showed colours that complemented eachother. It was very easy to pick the two colours I decided to use for my magazine which were yellow and purple. However for my college magazine I used 3 different shades of blue along with the colour orange/red for the puff. This made my college magazine look messy and it was lacking in professionalism. The clothing of the model in my magazine had to complement the colour scheme, and whilst taking the image for my college magazine I was not organised which meant I had to take the picture regardless of what the model was wearing. As she was wearing blues, my colour scheme had to include different shades of blue too. However as my music magazine photoshoot was organised, I was able to pick the clothing and I decided to go for the colour black as it goes with many colours including the fact that it significantly reflects my genre.
- 5. Development- Layout As we can see, the layout of my music magazine is very similar because I was inspired by the case studies that I looked at. I was inspired by both RockSound and Kerrang! magazine which means I not only got inspiration but I also changed some of the parts to make it looks even more professional like changing where the band names were written. However for my college magazine I had to make it up myself and it looks very amateor. The cover lines are placed anywhere and the puff/flash looks very out of place. However for my music magazine I was able to get a puff and place it in an appropriate place. In addition the placement of the barcode, date and the price also looks out of space in my college magazine whereas in my music magazine it almost looks hidden because there are a lot of things going on the front cover which is a good thing as the price wouldn’t be as eye-catching and the customers wouldn’t notice it straight away. ?
- 6. Overall... I have learnt a lot as I changed many things in my music magazine. I made sure the puff/flash on the front cover looked a lot more eye- catching for it to attract many customers, I changed the layout of my magazine and made my music magazine look a lot more professional. I made sure I was following the rule of using maximum 3 colours for the magazine and also maximum of 3 different fonts to ensure the magazine was significantly high is professionalism. I also went from taking amateur images to taking HQ images for my magazine to be visually pleasing, use lively colours to not make my magazine simple and boring and made many other small changed which made a big difference.
Today I started using Prezi to complete question 6 for my evaluation.
Question 6 Draft- Photoshop= I used Photoshop to create and edit many parts of my magazine and this software helped and transformed my magazine into a rock magazine which suited my genre. I used this technology to create the front cover for my magazine. I struggled when I first started using it however late on I found it very easy and I expanded my knowledge of the technology by watching youtube videos too. I learnt how to add tattoos on a person using photoshop so I added lots of tattoos on my model. Using my knowledge on how to add tattoos I figured out a way to add piercings myself. I even photoshopped the trousers my model was wearing and added black jeans because it was denim before. I was able to blur out areas and brighten some areas too and I used this method on the eye to make the eyes look sparkling. By adding different layers, I also learnt to erase backgrounds and put other things at the back even a light leak. Overall my experience with PhotoShop was really good and I have learnt a lot from using it.
Indesign= I used this technology to create my DPS and my contents page. I found it very struggling because I could not do many of the things I would have done when using photoshop. For example I couldn't crop, I could not edit, I could not do many of the things which was very time consuming because I had to keep going back to photoshop to edit what I wanted to and transfer it to InDesign. When using InDesign, I could add gradient affects, I could add margins and prevent my text from going out the box.
Prezi= Prezi is one of my favorite technologies I have discovered. This is because it is very easy to use and you can use it for many things. The first task I had to complete using Prezi was my magazine distribution slide, and I did not struggle whilst using it. I loved how I could go n detail by adding many different circles and the fact that I could add images and change the size and crop them was an additional advantage. This is because I did not have to use photoshop to crop the images, I could just crop them on prezi if I was not pleased with the size.
DSLR Camera= The photography workshop helped a lot and taught me how to use this camera. All the equipment in the photography studio is infra-red which means they have to be close to each other to connect. We were also told that before taking images in the photography room the lights needed to be switched off because the bulbs get too hot and it can explode the bulb. The lights we will be using is called trinity lights. There are two key lights and one snoot. The snoot is faced towards the back of the models hair to separate the background and the model. All of the lights have a + and - button to increase or decrease the amount of brightness, 1 being the lowest flash and 6 being the highest quality of flash. All these things helped me use the camera and overall I was able to take high quality photos for my magazine which I used for my front cover, contents and DPS.
Illustrator= When using this technology, I learnt things like duplicating, adding circles, moving specific parts of the letter and many more things. This technology was really helpful as it helped me to create my unique masthead. I was able to add many different things to my font, I could move it around from very specific points which means getting the same font as someone else was very unlikely. Along with this technology, using color.adobe was also helpful because it helped me pick the right complementary colors for my font scheme.
Recently I have started question 5 using photoshop and thinglink. I used photoshop to collage all the images together and by images I mean my front cover, contents page and the DPS for my magazine. The reason I decided to collage them is because I need to include all 3 images however on thinglink you cannot add them all together. You can annotate them separately however I wanted them all together. I then uploaded it on ThingLink and started added notes on it.I will be uploading it when I am finished with all the notes. However, I do regret picking this creative technology because this is not like powtoon where I can crop images to explain exactly which part I am writing about. Here I have to annotate on the exact part. The struggling part of this is for example if I talk about the layout, I have no attach the point on one specific point of the image where's the layout is carried everywhere. This means with thinglink I cannot be specific in all the areas.
