Question Seven

Looking back at you preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progress from it to the full product?

Starting Foundation Portfolio we had to create a magazine for our school. The magazine had to consist of a front page and a contents page. There is a vast difference between the school magazine and the magazine I created as part of my foundation portfolio.

We were able to go round the school and take pictures. Unlike my actual magazine, I didn’t plan what photos I was planning to shoot and did it all in the space of a single lesson. My model was dressed in her own clothes due to the lack of planning and therefore didn’t attract or appeal to a specific audience. Not many images were used and all the images taken were taken by phone making the magazine not look professional due to the lack of technological advanced cameras. This was different to the shoot I did for my magazine. The shoot was planned in terms of the fact that I had researched various aspects I wanted to incorporate into the pictures such as outfits, poses, props for mise en scene and locations. I had also booked a studio in advance of the shoot. I took careful consideration of my audience whilst deciding the location, outfits, makeup and location. I took about 400 images for both my indoor and outdoor photoshoots. This allowed me to have a wide variety of images to choose from when deciding what images would go best on what page. With planning my photoshoots in advance I was able to think about what locations to use. I chose to go to a skatepark to best suit my target audience which I was unable to do in my preliminary task.

I created the school magazine on Photoshop, whereas I created the music magazine on Indesign. Regardless of Indesign being a new software for me to use, I found it fairly simple to get how it worked. With the help on Indesign I was able to create realistic/professional magazine. I was able to do this by using the tools available on Indesign such as the guideline tool and placeholders for when I knew where I wanted an image to go but I hadn't chosen picked one yet. I was also able to create double pages and found that it was easier to text wrap and add images. Even though Photoshop can be used to create magazines, I found that it was easier to use Indesign as it was more professional and had the tools I needed to create an effective realistic magazine. Through the use of this software I in turn broadened my knowledge and skills when I came to media software. In addition, I saw it easier to use Photoshop for editing images that I wanted to place in Indesign as Indesign wasn’t the right software for editing images.

Although I had knowledge of Photoshop I hadn’t experimented with Photoshop in terms of making a magazine, hence why the preliminary magazine looked simple. I attempted to follow the same house style Haydon school carries out which is; blue, yellow and white. In comparison to my actual magazine a vast difference can be noticed. I was careful when choosing a house style as it had to be colours my target audience would find visually attractive.  I used a font website to look for an interesting font for my masthead.

 I've improved my skills whilst making the magazine. I've been able to experiment with styles in order to make my product appealing to its target audience which I would say it did.