Evaluation of preliminary task

My preliminary task was to create a magazine front cover and contents page for a college magazine. To start off, I went onto the Internet and researched lots of different magazines that would attract college students. By doing this I got an insight of what I should be including in my magazines and what college students like. After doing this I went out around the college in a group of four taking pictures on a camera of things around the college that I may be able to use in my magazine. When taking the photos I had to get different angles and focus depths on the images to make the pictures more effective for my magazine. After I had got my images I picked the image that would be the most useful to me and started to work on my magazine.

In this task I found that the layout of the overall magazine was the easiest as they are basically all the same. I included a masthead, central image, sell lines, tagline, date, price and included inside stories down the side. Another aspect of creating the magazine that I liked was using Photoshop. I enjoyed using Photoshop as it was the first time that I had used it in a while so I wasn’t quite up to scratch when I fist started as I couldn’t remember which tool did what. After I had been using Photoshop for a bit I started to get used to it again though as everything came back to me and I was comfortable on it again. However there were some aspects of creating the magazine that I struggled with. One of them was the font style and color for the genre of music that I had picked which would go with the background color. This is because I made the background image grey, as you wouldn’t interpret luminous colors with rap music. I managed to solve this problem by having a theme that I would use, which was only to use black white and red. I think that this makes the magazine more effective. Also I enjoyed working in a group getting to know the other students in my class a bit more and it weren’t as awkward as I was first expecting.

I liked using Photoshop for this task as I think that Photoshop can be very useful for editing images and having a good layout due to the layers. This also made it easier for me as I had used it before. I also liked comparing my layouts to other layouts that I had thought of to get the best one. This means that the magazine will be a better standard.

I created the masthead and shapes that I used to split up the stories down the side myself easily and I made sure that the masthead was simple but effective so that It would be easily recognizable.

In the contents page I wanted to make it look more mature so I used a model who looks like a rapper to show what the magazine will be about and this shows what type of contents will be in the magazine. I also stuck to the same color scheme to make the magazine more repetitive.

Time management post

I think that I am managing fine with the work that I have been given. However, I am still catching up with the class since I have been on holiday so I am doing the work in my own time. This is all right for me though as I understand the work that I need to complete to catch up and I am able to ask my lecturer or other students for help if I ever get stuck. This is helping me enjoy the subject more and hopefully I will do well in this subject.

Research into other students work

I have looked into other students’ work to see how their blog is developing and seeing how they have set out the work they have completed so far.  I have done research into Sam Green’s blog and seen how his first ideas have developed into his final cover, DPS and contents page. He has used lots of different software’s in his blogs such as padlet, Facebook, prezi and more. This will have helped him get a good grade and create a very good blog. His blog is very organized however; it is quite hard to navigate round, as the headings and stuff aren’t very distinctive. I have gathered that his magazine is aimed at older audiences as it is very professional and a lot of the context is for people who are older to enjoy. The things that I like about his blog are the layout and how well everything is being put into detail. This is something that I want my blog to be like as I think that this will make a good blog. However, I would definitely make my headings of the blog stand out more as this is a down side to his blog and this makes it less effective. Altogether though, I think that this blog is very god and I will be trying to make my blog of the same standard as his.