Amy’s Weblog

For our foundation preliminary task we were asked to create either a print which would consist of a magazine cover and contents page, or a short video. I decided straight away that I wanted to do a print, as making the video didn’t appeal as much to me.
For the task, we would have to completely create the front cover and the contents page of a college magazine. In the brief it also stated that the photo on the front cover would have to be an original image, taken by ourselves, of a student in a medium close up shot.
We were also told that we could work either individually or as part of a group. I decided it would be more fun and a lot more manageable if i worked in a group, with several other people. There were five people in my group for this task, and it did help a lot to have the support and help of the four other members.
We all did our own individual research of different magazines. The first piece of recorded research I did was a piece where I had cut out different bits from several different magazines and put them together to create my own version of a cover with all different qualities from the other magazines that I liked and might be able to incorporate into my own magazine cover. I found a suitable photo of a student looking person for the front of the cover that met the brief. I cut out a barcode and chose to make it vertical because it was one quality i’d wanted on my magazine cover from the start. I think it looks more professional and a lot of magazines seem to have vertical barcodes. I also liked the idea of the magazine name being in capitals and shadowed. (See folder for actual cover).
I then created a mock up contents page in the same way, by cutting out different parts from different contents pages and putting them together. My favorite thing on the page is a little menu that says ‘Only in this weeks Heat’ and it has little pictures and text telling you about a few things in the magazine. This would me something i would have liked to use. I also found that in one magazine, Heat, they had little coloured boxes around the page numbers in their contents page, and this was something I was really attracted to. I used this in my contents page because it instantly adds colour to a page. (See folder).
I also looked at another contents page from Sneak magazine. It was a very old contents and I wanted to see if much of the layout used in more recent contents pages had changed much. It was similar to the contents page i created myself because it had an ‘inside this week’ section. Again, this was something i would have really liked to have used, but the rest of the people in my group weren’t too keen. I also liked the ‘on the cover’ section, because the cover it was attracts the reader to the magazine, and this immediately shows the reader where they can find what they expect to find inside. (See folder.)
I also looked at the front cover of Look magazine. My favorite thing here was the dominating photo that covers the whole background of the page. This is something i have used on my cover, along with the title being it capitals, the same as Look magazine. It just looks more professional. (See Folder).
After we’d completed our research individually, we all sat together and started to create initial sketches of our potential magazine covers. (See folder for original sketches). Our first idea was to have a magazine with five different issues, each issue focussing on a different A Level at the college. We decided on the name of ‘What’s next?’ as it gave the sense of the magazine helping the student to make choices about their course. We also decided to have the background of the page being totally dominated by a photo of a student in a medium close up shot. The choice of A Level would be displayed in a bubble over the top of the photo; my assigned subject was photography.
Our second idea was similar to the first in the sense that, again, we would have five issues of the same magazine. We decided to call this magazine ‘A Student Guide To…’ and then focussing each issue on an element of life that a student might need to focus on and learn more about, like cooking or finding a job. We said that we have a photo aligned to the right of the page with tags and small photos around the edges. Eventually we decided this wasn’t the right idea for us as it seemed to be more like a magazine for University students.
For our third idea, we decided to create an individual cover so we could present our own individual ideas. We decided to do this so we could present our own ideas forward to the rest of the group, and try to have equal input. For my own idea, i created a magazine called ‘Go:College’. The background would have had a dominating photo in the background that covered the whole page and would have been really crowed with lots of taglines. The title would have been in capitals to look professional. The crammed page would have certainly grabbed the readers attention. We decided against this idea because we felt our magazines would have been a lot more different this way and we would have found it harder to stick with a regular house style and colour scheme.
We decided to go with our first idea because we decided that it was more appropriate to the college as we could have several different issues. (See final sketches and comments in my folder).
I created a couple of mock up covers to get an idea of what the cover and contents should look like before coming up with my final idea, and printing it off and getting feedback from my peers. All of my sheets have individual notes, these can be found in my folder.

I’m relatively pleased with my final product. I think it looks quite professional and it looks like it would fit in well with other magazines on the shelf. (My final product can be found in my folder).
My final cover doesn’t look that much different to my original sketches, because i knew from the beginning exactly what i wanted my cover to look like. I was pleased i was able to create it how i wanted and that it looked how i’d imagined. It doesn’t look much different to my mock up either, because again, i knew exactly the type of photo i wanted from the start, and was able to take my own photo to fit that style.
Several changes were made to the magazine as a group effort; we all found things in each others work that we liked, and other things that we didn’t like so much. Some of the people in the group had dots after the title, and others didn’t and this was one of the main problems in the group. We found that sometimes when we put the dots in different places in the title it made it grammatically incorrect, and that would not have been professional. In the end we did decide to have the dots, but at the end of the title as it was grammatically correct and it also gave the sense of ongoing and leading you into the rest of the magazine. We also changed the title font several times so that all of issues had the same style and size of text, keeping the continuity correct. We also decided on a colour scheme of red, black and white because it occurred in a few of our magazines anyway, so it was easy to add this to our house style. My front cover has a dominating picture that covers the whole background and my title is in capitals like i’d originally wanted. It also has a few taglines and the photography bubble is situated toward the bottom of the page.
Each of our contents pages were quite different as some of the people in the group had double contents pages, and then others had single contents pages. We tried to stick to the colour scheme on our contents pages and try and keep a similar layout. My contents pages follow quite a simple and plain layout with a white background and a lot of pictures. I’ve written quite a long editors note and included two pictures at the bottom. I’ve added a lot of photos because it reflects the theme of photography which is my A Level issue of the magazine.

In terms of the institution, which is this case is a college, it promotes the college in a positive way to new students about to start the college, and also to students that are already there. It does this by promoting the individual course, in this case photography. It tells students what the course involves. It also tells students about events going on in the college. This shows the college in a positive way because the material produced talks about the good things in the college and everything that is going on. The magazine would be distributed for free in the college reception and library and would be sold in the refectory shop. This attracts a range of different audiences as the shop will sell to just students, as will the library with the occasional teacher having a look. In the reception, however, a different audience will be attracted as it will open to more people. It may attract parents of current or new students, new students themselves, or just the general public. This creates positive promotion for the college as more people will get to see it, and have positive opinions on everyone else reading it.

My brief was to create either the front page and contents page of a magazine or to create a short video.

I prefered the idea of creating a magazine, and have decided to progress with this idea.

During my first week of media studies, we had to discuss how much we engaged with the media on an average day and then we were asked to start to plan our first ideas of our magazines. We had to look at other magazines and gather information about their layout, design and content. I decided to group with a few people in my class and create a magazine which had several different issues to it.

Moving into week two of the course, as a group, we expanded on our ideas. We decided that each issue of our magazine would be based on a different A Level. Each magazine would have consistant factors in it such as a problem page and an upcoming events page. The A Level I am focussing on is Photography, as I am taking it as an A Level and I feel I can relate to it. We gave a group presentation about our magazine to te rest of our group to share our ideas.

In week three, we looked at SMART targets, what they were, and setting ourselves some targets. By looking at these we managed to decide that we still had a lot of work to do in planning our magazine. We also experienced some training on the mac’s which was really fun. We learnt how to cut out different parts from certain pictures and place them onto different backgrounds. We also learnt how to use a program on the mac called Photobooth which involved us taking pictures of ourselves and our friends and editing them in Photoshop. This came about because we watched a documentary made by Aleesha Dixon where she tried to find a magazine which would publish an un-touched picture of her on their front cover. We were using the mac’s to re-touch the photos we took. In our photoshop training we experimented with layers.

We went onto the macs again to create a mock version of our magazine. We had to find out our house style and the colours and fonts that we were planning on using. We also had to find an example of a photo that we were planning on using on our front page of our magazine. I found a similar picture to what i wanted on my cover and added it in. I looked at the ‘heat’ magazine cover and got an idea from the top part of their cover. They have an effect that looks like the page has ripped and i really like this; i’m hoping to use this on my magazine cover.

04-11-08
During our lesson today, we were using the macs again to continue our magazine mock ups. Last lesson I started to create a mock up cover, but looking at it again this lesson, I changed my mind. I really liked the ripped page idea which I got from ‘Heat’ magazine, however it was impossible to use as the other people in my group weren’t too keen. All of the people in my group had slightly different designs to their magazines, so we all decided to sit together and re-plan how we wanted the magazine to look. We agreed on some continuous things for our magazine and then on other things that didn’t need to be the same. I then drew a quick sketch of my front cover, ready to re-create it on the mac. We made several changes once we got onto the macs, like the font being changed a few times, and adding a transparent cloud with the magazine genre in it. I started to add features of the magazine to the front cover and added a vertical bar code and an issue number. I still need to create a mock up of my contents page; I hope to do this next lesson. I printed my mock up version today to put into my folder.

25-11-08

In today’s lesson I uploaded my own photo’s onto the mac and imported my own photo to my front cover. I had to edit a few of the things on the front page, mainly the colours of text as they didnt show up as well on this background. I’m really happy with the way my cover now looks, but I still need to run a questionaire to see what other people think and if i should make any changes. I also finished my contents page today. My contents page is a double page spread, hence why it’s taken me so long to complete. I asked a few people in my class what they thought and overall they were impressed giving constructive criticism with a few things i could change. I hope to add a border at the bottom of my contents page and some people commented that it was lacking colour toward the bottom of the page, as both of the photos i have used are black and white. Im really happy with editors note but i hope to add one more picture, and maybe a photo of MCFLY (L) somewhere. I also want to create a questioinnaire so people can tell me what they think of my magazine and how i can improve ;D. I printed two versions of my cover today. I’ve annotated them both and said what things i’d like to change

2-11-08

In todays lesson I worked on finishing my cover and contents page and trying to perfect them to the best of my ability. I had some hook lines on my front cover that were a bit on the wonk, but today i decided to make them straight because re-looking over my research i felt that it looked more professional. Towards the end of the lesson, i created a first draft of my questionnaire. Looking at my hopes from last lesson, i decided to add a picture of me with Danny from mcfly, as i mention them on my front page and contents page in my editors note. I added it at the bottom of my editors note with another picture of me. I wasn’t too sure how good this looked, and if it was too much, so i added a question discussing this into my questionnaire to see what other people thought about it. I didnt get the chance to give out my questionnaire this lesson, so i’m hoping to hand it out next week while i complete an evaluation of my project and put everything together. After college, i went to Louise’s house, another member of my group, to write up some notes and copy up my original ideas.

Next lesson I plan to hand out my questionaires in the first part of the lesson, and take the feedback on board and improve where i can. If i have any spare time in this section of the lesson i will start a mock of my commentary. In the second half of the lesson, i will work on putting everything in my folder together, and writing up my evaluation. ;D

9 -12-08

In todays lesson, I was working on finishing off my front cover and contents page completely and started to hand out my questionnaires. I also added a harlow college logo to my magazine to make it more specific to a college. I also made the barcode thinner so it looked more professional. I created a contact sheet of all my images to put into my folder to evidence that I’ve taken my own photos and made a careful decision in choosing the right photo for my cover. I printed another contact sheet with my four favorite images on it and made a short comment about each of them.
Everyone in my group got together to talk about one person’s (Ryan’s) work. We discussed continuity and how his didn’t really fit with the rest of the group’s magazines. He changed a few things around a bit, and we came to a decision on what looked better. From talking about Ryan’s work, we decided that we would add dots after the title to give the idea of ‘What’s Next?’ being an ongoing question.
At home, I need to put all my notes and stuff together into my folder and make sure my research is up to date.

16-12-08

I was trying to update my production log today by adding screen shots of all the ways in which i have improved my magazine cover and contents pages over the course by it really wasn’t going to plan. When i tried to print screen it just wasn’t letting me and i ended up getting really annoyed with myself and the mac. I’ve decided that the physical evidence i have of me making changes to my magazine is going to be my evidence and i will produce a folder consisting of all the work I’ve done. All of the pages ive printed are annotated with feedback ive recieved from other people and things that i think need improving. I’m also going to hand out my questionnaire, and i’m hoping to hold a focus group meeting to discuss what still needs to be improved before my deadline on the 6th January.