Question 6- AS Media Evaluation

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

PhotoshopI used Photoshop when designing the front cover of ‘Image’ Magazine. At first I did not know how to use it – evident from my first magazine constructed for a ‘school magazine’ project. I discovered how to do new things such as; what pre-set to use to best fit a magazine front cover. How to crop, place, transform and add effects to pictures to make them better suit the genre of your magazine. This was beneficial to my magazine as I could best fit my photography to suit the genre of my magazine.

As you can see here, Photoshop also allowed me to add, develop and challenge real magazine conventions on my front cover. On my LSC magazine I was unaware of how to use Photoshop to its full ability. On my Image magazine I used few cover lines on purpose as I was going for a certain style I saw on a XXL magazine. I learnt how to add effects to the text making the cover lines really reach out to my targeted audience. I made it bolder and embossed it making it more eye-catching, emphasising what that artist is proposing. I believe this has been beneficial to my magazine in terms of emphasising and catching the eye and also it has added to the look of it all.

Also…Style in which I was going for

Names of additional artists throughout the magazine.

Bold cover lines.

Lack of knowledge to use Photoshop to full potential; nonetheless I have learnt more over the course of designing Image

Photo nicely cropped and adjusted using magic wand and cropping tool

In-design• I found using In-design confusing to begin with which is also

evident in my preliminary task contents page. I have developed using in-design as it allowed me to use, challenge and develop conventions I have seen on XXL Magazines. I was able to move my masthead onto in-design; create shapes to make space for page numbers, features and puff/flash etc. I also learned how to make fields to place images in and how to fit content to frame and arrange images to bring them forward/ to the front etc. In-design is what I used for my contents page and DPS and was a big help.

Old NewMy contents pages

logger

Blogger was helpful to me as I used it as a place to update and track my work and progress almost every time there was a lesson. Therefore when the next lesson came it was easy to recognise where I left off. I could clearly see my progress and I could access my classmates blogs which gave me a taste of how my work should look etc. I could comment on their blogs ways to improve and what they did well and they could do the same for me which gave me an insight to way others viewed my magazine. This helped me to take all the positive criticism and use them to construct and develop my work. This was all very beneficial to me.

Adobe Illustrator I used Illustrator to design and create my masthead “Image”. This was very beneficial in terms of branding my magazine as it gave my magazine a unique selling point and a point of value. Illustrator helped me to make my masthead look creative and read. I was able to add effects and erase sections of my masthead. Making it glow, become 3D, etc.

I decided to change the colour of my masthead as my cover star was wearing a blue jacket and purple didn’t seem to suit the look anymore.