EVALUATION Q7: Looking back at the preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt from it through the progression from it to a full product?

My preliminary task was to create a magazine front cover and a contents page. I had to work from scratch, picking out a specific model, taking my own photographs using an EOS 400D canon camera and editing my images with a photo editing software which I envision how I wanted it to look it. I found that task quite simple because I wanted the models to show their personalities and look natural. I have used Adobe Photoshop before; therefore I concentrated on getting the best out of my skills. However what I found difficult was setting up the lighting and camera as I was unfamiliar with it. I had to set up the soft box correctly, placing it to get the best lighting effect on how I desire it to be and getting the camera to focus on that subject which didn’t turn out so too bad with a couple of practice shots which the photographs came out decent.

For the main task, I learnt how to set up soft boxes and the triggers around it. I had to be very careful not to touch the bulb as a hazard of working with the soft boxes to avoid injury from electric shock from my preliminary task. I have also learnt the effects soft boxes create which is a diffused light by ‘bouncing’ light off a second surface to diffuse the light which gets rid of the harsh shadows and creates a smooth effect when the light is on the subject. This made it look natural and simple to blend in with my dark background.

During the process I tried to stick to deadlines and get things done as quickly as possible as I realise my organisation of time is limited. I had to work around my other subjects taking it into consideration and work quickly and effectively as I could. The equipment’s and props were already available for me which saved a lot of time. For my model, it was simple as I wanted a young black female with personality in a type of urban street clothing style which was typical for females. I took many photographs of different angles and poses which I could choose the best ones later on.

As I already know how to use Adobe Photoshop CS3 I focused on bringing out the best of my skills. For my main image, I used brightness and contrast adjustments to emphasis the model, making her stand out more. Secondly I used the Lasso tool to cut around her figure and remove the background from her to place her on my dark navy background which I made through Photoshop. It had a lighter glow in the middle in relations to her being a ‘new upcoming artist’ so I wanted to show that she was the star of that months edition of the magazine. I also used ‘smart blur’ to make my models face look flawless and smoother, almost an airbrush effect.

For my magazine, when creating it I used several similar fonts, all sans-serif which is the font without the flicks at the ends apart from the name ‘JOY-ANN’. By doing so, it gives the magazine a sense of a modern feeling. The reason why ‘JOY-ANN’ is in serif (font with the flicks in the ends) instead of sans-serif is because she is a female on the front cover and so I wanted to have a feminine touch to it. For the masthead, I used a large sans-serif font and made it big and bold in the colour white. I also put a shadow inside of the font to make it stand out more as this is important for the audience to recognise and remember the brand. Throughout the magazine I kept the font on different varieties of sans-serif fonts unless it’s to do with the upcoming female artist ‘Joy-Ann’ that I would switch it up to a serif font to have that feminine feel.

Overall, the strength of my magazine is that people liked the look of it and feel as though I have achieved the RnB/Hip-Hop genre for the British audience. I was happy that I was able to complete my products in time, the magazine cover, contents page and double page spread.

The weakness of my product is that I believe I should have made the background more colourful instead of one dark, bold colour to bring more personality to it. Another weakness of it is that I could have added trendier, youthful fonts as it is aimed more to teenagers because the sans-serif font could also be seen as boring.  If I was to do this again I would make sure I add more range of colours and more varieties of fonts that could also be modern yet trendy.

Comparing my preliminary college magazine task and music magazine final product I feel like I have learned from it and have improved. During the making of my college magazine task I imagined what a college magazine would look like and created it out of my out creativity and design abilities. Whereas for my main task I searched in depth on the conventions of magazine, layout and the music genre looking into different magazines such as VIBE as an inspiration. Since creating my preliminary task, I realised I had to work quick therefore my timing improved. My Photoshop skills and setting up the camera equipment also improved and I developed an understanding of the camera and how to focus.