Class Vote- Masthead & Font

After presenting my prezi to my class, I had a public vote about the masthead name and the font I will use in my real magazine. 6 people voted for 'LoudSound' and 8 people voted for 'Thunder' which means I will go with 'Thunder'. I was inspired by this word as it reminds me of the words loud and dark. In addition, a lot of people advised me to use the second font I presented which means I will use the second font. Some people said the second font was the best because the font looked as if it was melting and looked gothic which related to my genre which is metal/rock. 

Using BlinkPlan + Prezi

In today's lesson, I started creating and thinking about the pages I am planning to have in my actual magazine. This specific topic helped a lot because I had to think about content that I thought would be interesting to have in my magazine, and this meant I had more and more ideas for my cover lines. It also helped me to think about my contents page too as It means I have an idea of where to place some interesting facts in the magazine and the pages. Whilst doing this task, I also thought about new masthead names for my magazine and the different fonts I might use. I will be creating a prezi to present all of my ideas, and share it with my class on Friday so make sure to keep up with the posts. I made a Prezi account and I will be designing a visually interesting prezi to share my ideas with my class and get their opinions.

Illustrator Workshop

In today's lesson, we had Tom who came over to our class to teach us how to use the Illustrator to create our masthead. We learnt things like duplicating, adding circles, moving specific parts of the letter and more. We were also introduced to a website called color.adobe.com where we could pick out specific colours that complemented eachother and saw different shades of a colour too. We then copied the specific code of the colour and pasted it on the actual colour part on Illustrator which changed the colour of the writing. I enjoyed using this software because it allows you to move specific parts of the text which you cannot do on other softwares like InDesign or PhotoShop. However, this is not my final design because I am still not sure about the colour scheme. Overall, I liked how I duplicated the layer and added a darker blue in the background which made the Masthead look 3d. In addition, I added white circles in the middle of the letters 'O's and 'D'. I added the white circles to make those specific letters thinner which I think made a big difference. I will probably use Illustrator when I create my actual Masthead because it has many advantages.

Initial Ideas for my own Magazine

Genre- The genre for my own music magazine will be Rock and Metal. I decided to include metal and rock together as some people might enjoy listening to heavy metal whereas some may listen to soft rock. By having both together, It allows variety and different audience members to buy my magazine as they all have something they may enjoy or be interested in reading.

Masthead:  My masthead will be rock related, for example 'MBS' standing for "Music, bands, singers" is a great same. Also names like 'Thunder' or 'LoudSound' could also be great as well as "Eerie"

Colour scheme- My colour scheme will include colours that most rock/metal magazines usually use. The most important colour is black as black is a Gothic and dark colour and along with yellow the colours would match as many rock/metal magazines have the colour yellow. Another typical colour for a rock magazine is red however I am not sure whether I would use the colour red or not because I do not want my magazine to be very typical. I want to add a different twist to my magazine and make it different yet visually pleasing.

College magazine Front cover Plan

This is my front cover plan for my college magazine. I didn't work on the drawing of the girl because there is going to be a model however I roughly planned out my cover lines. I will also be adding a sky-line and a flash/puff when it comes to my actual magazine. I used my recent post to decide what I wanted to put on my cover lines because these are the kinds of things most students would want to see in a college magazine which means more students would buy it. Also I will be adding issue date, web links, and issue number later on in my real college magazine too.

Pages in my College Magazine

On this recent lesson, we were given this sheet to write down the pages we would have in our magazine. The reason for this is so it would be easier to write the contents page and the cover lines on the cover cover. My college magazine includes things such as the outfits page, healthy eating page, enrichment page, bursary page and even trips + other things. I chose to include some things like this because more people would want to buy my magazine as many people are interested in trips and outfit ideas etc. Also, my magazine is not targeted towards just boys or just girls. It is for both sex's which means I would have included both outfits for boys and girls if I was to create this magazine.

Using Photoshop for the first time

In today's lesson, we learnt how to use some basics on Photoshop. For example, we learnt how to add layers, how to add text, how to erase things( masthead) and more. I've always wanted to learn how to use Photoshop as I love editing, but I never got around to actually learning how to use it. It was a very interesting lesson and surprisingly I did not struggle a lot. One of the things I struggled about was going back to a text to change the font because once you save the font, you have to go back and click on the 'T' to highlight the text. I did not get to finish my magazine cover because I did not have a lot of time. I still wanted to add more cover lines, a flash/puff and strap line. Although I did not finish it, I am happy with the result because I love the colour scheme of my magazine. I am looking forward to learning more in-depth techniques using Photoshop.

Music magazines & College Magazines

Some of the similarities between Music and College magazines:

• Both College and Music magazines follow the traditional colour scheme of when 3 colours used.
• Both magazines have a masthead which can be behind the cover image which usually makes magazine covers look very professional.
• Both magazines have cover lines to give us an insight of what we might see inside the magazine.
• Both magazines have a bar code, both can also have issue date and the price.

Some of the differences between Music and College magazines:

• Magazines covers can be in many sizes, however having a close up image as a cover of a college magazine would look a little weird as the audience would want to see what the person is wearing and the environment etc. Not necessarily what the models face looks like.

• Also, the cover model on a college magazine would usually be smiling with their teeth or have a big smile to suggest that the college is a very welcoming and warm place . Whereas music magazines would have very seductive/ skin showing images to attract audience attention(depending on the genre ).

Good College Magazine Analysis

This college magazine follows the traditional colour scheme of three colours. The colours that are used in this magazine are Yellow, blue and white. These colours are not visually tiring and with the background and the model it looks put together because the lady's eyes are blue, and her hair has highlights which complement the use of yellow.

This image is also a mid-shot and the quality of the image and the whole magazine cover looks a lot more put together. This is because it looks planned out and worked on. 

The cover lines on the magazine does not look bad because they follow the colour scheme and the same font. The use of font in this magazine looks good because it is the same throughout the whole magazine. 

The bar code is at the bottom of the magazine cover as usual and does not have very eye catching colours next to it which will take our attention.

This magazine cover also includes the issue date. In addition, the fact that the masthead is behind the model suggests that the magazine cover is professional as most magazines have this feature. 

Bad College Magazine Analysis

The colour scheme on this magazine does not follow the traditional colour scheme where you only follow three colours. On this magazine we can see green, yellow, purple, blue and red which looks very bad. It is visually tiring and looks very unprofessional. 

The image on the magazine is a mid-shot which okay however the quality of the image is horrible. The person who edited this photo clearly did not do a good job as the cuts are very bad. It looks like someone cut the image and placed it on a white background which then again, looks very unprofessional and unskilled.

The magazine has cover lines and the problem with the cover lines is that they are very big, it looks as if the person tried to make us visualise the quantity , the good info in the magazine but did not achieve their aim as it looks every crowded.The green rectangles that separate the cover lines look horrible because a normal magazine does not have shapes to separate cover lines, the use of the purple colour would have been enough to separate it.

The cover has a bar code which every magazine has however the 'EW MEDIA' makes it look very childish and brings our attention to the bar code area which is not an appealing thing to do as usually the price will be written there.