Jacob Wardle AS Media: September 2014

What have you learnt from completing this task?

From completing this task on creating a front cover for a college magazine I have learnt how to use Photoshop in many different ways. I have learnt how to create layers in order to make to editing process much easier as mistake are made simpler to change. The order and opacity of these layers can also be changed to create different transparent effects layered over each other. I have learnt how to change the canvas size, which allowed me to create a document in the correct size for an A4 magazine. I now know what the terms Semiotics, connotation and denotation mean which I can now use for future questions and research. I have learnt how to remove spots and blemishes and change the colour of things such as eyes, teeth, nails and even skin. I then could transfer this knowledge into editing my main feature image on my magazine front cover. This project has taught me how to use the blogger website which I used to present my work and progression over this task. I have learnt how to upload posts, change and edit the aesthetics of the blog itself, change the sizes and layout of images I am uploading and share areas of my blog as it is operated through a Gmail account. I have also learnt the conventions of a magazine which are the mast head, skyline, plug, multiple feature stories, main feature story, main image (usually a medium close-up), footer, pull quote, barcode, and price and issue number. I learnt these conventions by labelling existing college magazine front covers such as university link. This knowledge was then used to create my own front cover. I also now know how to take an appropriate photograph for a magazine front cover. I have learnt to take the main image as a portrait so it will fit the A4 front cover, it should also be a medium close-up so the person is in the image but there is still a visible background.

How have you used technology?

I used technology in the process of making my college magazine front cover. I have used Photoshop both on the PC’s and the Apple Mac’s which allowed me to edited and put together my front cover. I have been using ‘blogger’ to hand in all of my work and show the progress that has been made over this project. I have been using a camera to take pictures for my front cover and of scene ideas and locations. I used my mobile phone to capture some images of different camera framing (Extreme close up, Close up, Medium close up, Long shot, High angle, Low angle, Two shot, Image framed to the left, Image framed to the right, Central image). I used blogger to upload my work and create a blog, using blogger made it much easier to present my work as it was all together in one place and it showed clear dates of when the piece of work was uploaded. It also helped give me a sense of progress and how much work I had done in a certain period of time. This allowed me to plan ahead as I could estimate the length of time each task would take me. Uploading work too blogger allowed me to present it in different ways by changing size and orientation of images, adding text and description and also adding a title. This made my work much clearer and easier to read. Before uploading to my blog, I had to save my work as a JPEG; this made it much easier as the file size was smaller making it much quicker to upload. I have also used ‘Moodle’ which was the way of finding tasks and lesson PowerPoint presentations which allowed me to.

What conventions have you used and why?

I have used many conventions on my cover of a college magazine, First of all I analysed the conventions of three existing college/student/university magazines, I choose ‘University link’ as they were very well presented front covers. I analysed all the available conventions which were the mast head, sky line, footer, barcode, plug, multiple feature stories, price, date, issue number, main feature story, main image and pull quote. I did this so I could learn the conventions of a magazine. I then used this new knowledge in the production of my own college magazine, making it much better and more accurate than it would have been if I had not known these magazine conventions. On my college magazine front cover most of these conventions were featured. I used a plug as it is an important part of any magazine due to the fact that it gives the reader that extra reason to buy the magazine. I had multiple feature stories on my cover because they provide the reader with an overview of what is going to be featured in the magazine. This is also the same reason for the use of a skyline. I also put a footer onto the cover as it balances out the use of a skyline which therefore makes the magazine look more professional and much more aesthetically pleasing. As on every magazine I had a main feature image centred in the magazine front cover. I used a medium close-up shot which provided a familiar look and feel to the magazine as this camera framing is the most commonly used for magazine front covers. I have also featured a pull quote on my magazine cover which is used to give the reader a very small extract out of the magazine that they should be able to relate to or want to read more about.

What would you change if you were to do this task again?

If I was to do this project again, I would remove some areas in the background of the main feature photograph on the front cover. This is because some of the text on the feature stories is made quite hard to read as there are objects in the back blending with some of the colour. I would also screenshot more stages of my work in order to show the stages of my progress more clearly. If I was to do this task again I would make a better front cover because throughout this task I have been learning how to use Photoshop so my skills were not at as high of a standard as they are now. Learning how to use Photoshop affected this task slightly as it took time to learn resulting in less time to complete the task itself. This then made caused a lot of work to make up for this lost time which could have resulting in a lower standard and quality of my finished product. If I was to do this task again I would not flatten the image as it prevented me from moving the Plug around. This made the magazine front cover look a little bit cluttered as the plug and main feature story are very close to each other. Also, merging these images resulted in me not being able to edit other texts like the skyline and mast head, this resulted in being unable to reposition and edit these conventions.