Assessment of Preliminary Task

Overall, I feel like my magazine could have been much better if I had better time management. My poor time management is what stopped me from developing my skills on Photoshop and InDesign. However, my poor time management is my fault. I was partly lazy, but it was mostly due to the fact that I do not have access to Photoshop and InDesign at home, so I am only able to do the practical work in the sixth form. In my next task, I should spend more time after school working on my magazine as that is the only way to still have access to those programs after school.
I do believe my creative skills are improving, but I also think that having more inspiration could help. I did not have much inspiration for the magazine and that caused my contents page to be very plain. However, I am actually quite proud of my front cover, and I am proud that I was able to make some images transparent and incorporate them into my front cover. Making images transparent is definitely a skill I will be using in the future.
Another problem is that I think I am unable to backup my decisions very well since I do not know many specialist terms, so my blog lacks quality. Not only that, but my blog also has no sense of journey, so it does not feel like I am developing in my skills, and this is also made more obvious with the poor time management skills and large time gaps between blog entries.

Making Magazine Practice pt.4

I have finally completed my magazine front cover and contents page too.

The front cover was mostly explained previously. The new things in this updated version is the headline for the exclusive interview with the head boy and head girl of the sixth form. At the bottom there is also a promotion for WHSmith with a chance of winning a voucher for there, and this can be used to buy more school products such as stationary for example. I have included a date and a price for the magazine.

 

This is the contents page. Overall I think it is very minimal. I only managed to get the layout that I wanted, but not to a good enough quality. I got the picture of the common room that I needed, and despite it being blurry, I feel it is a good picture because there was a large number of students in the room at the time, which showed the communities of the sixth form. The contents had bright colours because they needed to be visible against the also bright background. The contents include things from outside the sixth form because the students are at a point in their lives where they have to get out and start working for themselves. I also included things relating to some subjects which were considered the most popular such as PE (football matches), sociology (meeting with MP), and history (expedition to caves).

Making Magazine Practice pt.3

So after some practice, I've decided that the picture of the first student I used was not going to work for my magazine, as the clothing and colours could not work. The colours were too similar or too different and I found it unappealing, so instead I decided to use a different student. Her clothing was much more better suited to my front cover ideas. Her red jumper was bright and also contributed to my idea of the general colour scheme of the magazine. In the bottom right, I used some pictures of one of my model friends, Sonam, and miraculously managed to edit them on Photoshop to make them transparent so that there isn't any white around the pictures to cover the main medium shot cover picture. Transparency also allows more than one picture of the model to be used and can also be overlapping slightly just to save some space. Her pictures take up more space on the cover and also make it eye catching. Sonam acts as the fashion model so that readers will know to expect fashion in the magazine, even if it school fashion. A white outline has been given to Sonam's pictures to make it look more professional. I've seen magazines such as Vogue giving their models white outlines, and I believe this would make it more visually appealing rather than just making them overlap with no outline.

The idea to have fashion in the magazine was drawn from the lack of school uniform from year 12 onwards. It was also drawn from the Phoenix magazine for King Edward VI High School for Girls.