Stephen Howe's AS Media Blog

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Analysis of front cover

Analysis of contents page

Analysis of double page spread

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

To produce my magazine pages, I used Photoshop CS4 & 5. This was the first time that I had used this program so I had to learn the basis of it while producing the preliminary task. After a few lessons working on the preliminary task, I felt that I was confident enough to be able to produce the pages at the quality I wanted them at.

Along with Photoshop, occasionally I used the Picnik website to edit photos. I had used this application before so I was happy to use it whereas it didn't contain the tools needed to edit some photos. This website came in very handy as I do not have Photoshop on my laptop at home, but with the aid of this website, I could edit my photos before the lesson to save time.

For the majority of my photos, mainly the photos of the cover stars, I used a Nikon DSLR. I Decided to borrow this camera from my friend because of the high quality of the photos produced from it. Once again, it was new technology to me but after tweaking it a bit, I soon found myself acquiring the photos I desired.
For the rest of the photos, I used the camera from my Sony Ericsson K800i. This was used for the shots from gigs that are used on the cover and contents page.Even if I had been able to use the Nikon for these shot, I would have chosen to use this instead due to it being more compact which is important if you are at the front of a crowd.

When it came to publishing my blog, the best decision was to use Blogger. This is how I can present my finished products and evaluations online. I found it a lot easier easier to use Blogger than having to write out separate evaluations on different pieces of paper. It also makes it a lot easier to organize as it's all in one place. Also, it's very handy being able to edit the blog from home rather than only being able to do it at college.

To upload my photos onto the Internet, I used Flickr. I used this to upload both my preliminary task as well as my finished products along with analysis of existing magazine covers, contents and double page spreads. This website made it a lot easier to analyze them as you can place a "note" over the top of the part that you are referring to. This is handy as it means that you don't have to point out what you are talking about before you start analyzing it. Another handy feature that Flickr has is that you can upload a photo directly to blogger. This means that you can still organize posts even when they're not on the same website.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the college magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Comparison of my Preliminary task and my Music magazine

Since starting my preliminary task, I feel that my Photoshop skills have improved drastically. This can be seen by the extra amount of things on the front cover. For my preliminary task, there is only one image and only a few of cover lines whereas, on my finished cover, I have included extra images, more cover lines and a footer. Also, with my preliminary task, there is no clear main cover line, something I have ensured I did not repeat for my finished product. Also, I only discovered how to fully use the magic wand tool once I had started my music magazine; something I only briefly knew how to use in the preliminary task. Thanks to this, I could cut out pictures better when it came to the double page spread. Another tool I didn't know how to use on the preliminary task was the drop shadow option in the effects menu. By using this, I allowed cover lines, mastheads and images to stand out from the page more, making it more appealing for the reader to pick it up. Also, I learned how to use layers effectively while creating the music magazine. This is how I created the effect of the masthead being behind the heads of the people in my main image on the front cover. One other Photoshop tool I only used while creating my music magazine is the ruler tools. In the preliminary task, some other the numbers in the circles indicating the page number are not in line with each other. But after learning about the ruler tool, I could inline everything for my music magazine and therefore, making it look more professional.

In between doing the preliminary task and the main music magazine I created a readership profile on Photoshop. This helped enormously when it came to working with Photoshop. The main tool that I learned how to use while doing this was the magic wand tool as I had to cut out images that I acquired from Google.

One tool I didn't have to use during the preliminary task but did for my music magazine is the spell checker. I had to use this to look for spelling and grammar mistakes in the body text of my main article. Although, I still had to proof read through the article encase there were any mistakes, which there were.

Overall, I gained a lot of experience for completing my music magazine by producing the preliminary task and the readership profile. Without doing this, my music magazine would have not been as detailed.