The Final Piece

Preliminary Task

Task: Our task was to produce a school/college magazine which should have encompassed a front cover of the magazine and the contents page of the magazine.

While studying magazines for our preliminary task; it has helped me to increase my knowledge about the sort of shots that are used for magazines and the angles of the shots. It has also helped me with the themes and colours of the magazine and how they relate to the main headline of the magazine.

Previously I have taken a lot of pictures and shots, but I have not used an SLR camera before. While I was thinking of images and photo shots for my preliminary task I chose to take the pictures with an SLR camera as I think that the pictures taken by an SLR camera is at better standards than an ordinary digital camera. I personally believe that I still need to work on using the SLR camera to progress further in media.

My strengths throughout this task must be organisation; throughout the task, I consider that I used my time rapidly and organised myself well for the task that was set. For example, I researched some contents page topics form college magazines to give me an idea about the kinds of topics and headlines they had. I also had a look at Yuri Arcurs who “is the world’s most successful microstock photographer” I researched him to see the style of pictures he had which gave me an idea about recreating a picture that he created from students. Alternatively, I think one of my biggest weaknesses that I came across while undertaking this task was Photoshop as I was struggling to use Photoshop since I did not know much about Photoshop and how it worked, I did not have any knowledge about it. I believe I have improved a lot while completing this task as I have increased my knowledge about Photoshop and have definitely got use to using it. I feel as if I have really come around it and have definitely progressed well through the few weeks of implementing our preliminary task.   

When I finally got my resources together for the magazine; it was time for me to start editing and putting the magazine together to form a front cover of magazine and a contents page of a magazine.  I originally wanted the model to lean to right side of the edge of the magazine but changed my mind and decided that I wanted the model leaning towards the left; in this way the magazine cover looked a lot clearer and spacious. While choosing the colour theme for the magazine I realised that I chose many different colours for the different type of headings that were going to be placed on the front cover of the magazine.  When changing my mind I wanted the colours and fonts to be kept simple and tidy as then it may help the reader to be able to read it. I tried to link the colours to the actual picture that was used for example;

-          the red heading was the same colour as one of the folders/ books:

-          the mid headline colour was taken from the models nail polish:

-          I chose to use one particular font mostly for every heading. The reason why I chose to do this was because I wanted to make the magazine cohesive between the contents page and the front cover of the magazine.

I also chose to change the layout of my contents page as I felt that it looked a lot better when the pictures were scattered around on the righ hand side rather than the left hands side. 

Overall, it has truly been amazing to be a part of the media class for this term. Our prelim task that was set was a great insight of Photoshop and the tasks that we might be receiving this year. The only think that I would improve on my next task is “blogger”. Using blogger for the first was a great experience. It has definitely given me the chance to have an insight about blogging and how important it is to keep it updated at all times.