Before carrying out the main task we did a preliminary task in which we had to create a school magazine. I learnt a lot from the preliminary task as I made some crucial errors which I learnt from, but I also found some strengths in my work which I carried on into my main task. One of the main errors I made on the front cover of my school magazine was that my picture was blurry and slightly out of focus. To ensure this problem did not occur again in the main task I used a tripod to steady the camera which also helped me achieve a wide range of angles in my shots that were in focus and sharp. I also lit the front cover of my main task much better; in my preliminary I used no lighting just the natural light coming through the window. This resulted in my image be very ordinary and in some ways washed out. From this I decided that in my main task I must light my image well to emphasize the subject of my magazine and also to make it look more professional.
One thing that I really liked about my preliminary task was the way I created quite a strong house theme using similar fonts and color schemes, making the pages "belong" together. This is a technique I also adapted to my main task although it was slightly harder as I had a much more limited target market.
The distorted texts were another flaw in my preliminary task and while they are readable, it is slightly hard to distinguish certain letters and can sometimes be unclear. In my main magazine I wanted to ensure that this problem would not arise so I used simple bold fonts that were not gimmicky- they just did the job to make it easy to read. However I still wanted them to look good so I used narrow sleek looking typefaces to reflect the type of music my magazine genre is.
Another key learning curve from the preliminary task was almost definately the contents page. I was really unhappy with the way my prelimary school magazine contents page turned out; I felt it looked very amateur and I really did not enjoy constructing it. My fonts were too big and the flat colours and structure were not very attractive to the eye and if I am honest I'm not sure I would buy a magazine if it had a contents page like this. From this I have learned that in the main task I needed to approach the contents page very differently. I put a lot of research into looking at magazine contents pages and identified what I did and didn't like about other music magazines contents pages. As seen in my planning, I eventually found a cover from Spin magazine's contents page, which had the use of an image for the background on the contents page. I really liked this concept and it inspired my own contents pgae, which I am much happier with in comparison to my preliminary task.
What Have I learnt?
- To use photoshop- adjust colour levels, layers, magnetic lasso, drop shadow, spot healing tool, clone tool
- To download fonts from "dafont.com" in order to give me a varation of font to choose from.
- To use indeign- align text boxs, wrap text
- To use an SLR camera
- To make a blog
- To use research to construct a magazine using the convention of the magazine I had researched.
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