Music magazine front cover (AS Re-sit)

Music magazine double page spread (AS Re-sit)

My Ideal Reader Profiles Moodboard (AS Re-sit)

My Ideal Reader Profiles (AS Re-sit)

Ideal reader profile

This ideal reader profile gives an indication as to who my main target audience will be and their lifestyle. My music magazine Bump ‘n’ Grind is of a hip hop and soul genre.

Name: Lisa (female)

Nationality: Nigerian

Lives: London

Age: 18

Occupation: Student with a part time job at Nandos

Studying: Fashion and music at Goldsmiths University

Likes: Socialising on Twitter and Facebook, shopping, clubbing and generally having fun. Listening to music particularly R ‘n’ B, hip hop, soul and occasionally rap

Listens to: ChoiceFm and Kiss100 sometimes too

Designers Lisa wears: Uggs, New Era, Nike, Louis Vuitton and Ed Hardy

Owns a: Blackberry Torch 9800, Laptop and an iPod touch

Name: Kevin (male)

Nationality: Half Jamaican and Irish

Lives: London

Age: 20

Occupation: Student with a part time job at JD Sports

Studying: Photography at Brunel University

Likes: Socialising on Twitter and Facebook, clubbing, meeting up with friends and playing Call of Duty, Fifa12 and many others.  Also likes shopping, going to the cinema and listening to music particularly R ‘n’ B, hip hop, rap, garage and house music

Designers Kevin wears: Nike, New Era, Adidas, Gucci, Abercrombie and Fitch and Lyle and Scott

Owns a: Macbook pro, Beats headphones (by Dr Dre), iPhone 4s and a Canon 600d

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (AS Re-sit)

7. Looking back at the preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression into a full product?

In creating my music magazine I have acquired some useful skills and some skills that I have previously possessed have been nurtured. There were many tasks I had to undergo before making my magazine including planning and research and other things I did not expect to do. Doing this all independently helped me with my time management and organisational skills. I had to decide on who I wanted to use as models for my magazine, plan and arrange suitable times for all of us so that I could take my photographs.

Constructing my front cover and contents page was slightly more straightforward as they are both A4 canvases but when I was going to start producing my double page spread I had to open a new file, use an A3 canvas and rotate it 90 degrees. By doing so, the page became landscape which is what I wanted. Evidently I have learnt quite a fair amount about Photoshop considering I had never really used it before. Two very useful things I’ve learnt are how to place an image onto a canvas and how to move an image from one canvas to another.  

I chose my font cleverly and strategically. When I decided on the genre of my magazine and what I would call it, almost immediately I had an idea of the type of font I’d use. I wanted something swirly but not too fancy that it’d be illegible. Also, I knew that I’d use the Times New Roman font as this is my favourite font and it looks decent and elegant. I understand how important it is to pick the right and most suitable fonts as fonts tend to have a key impact on the reader and how they perceive the product. A font can determine whether a potential consumer buys (or reads) a magazine or not.

Ultimately, creating my three pieces and all the pre-production and post-production tasks has taught me the importance of evaluating my work. Evaluating makes you think about what you did and why you did it, this enables you to see what you could do next time to improve your work.

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

Producing my magazine was the first time I actually used Photoshop expansively. Before I had just used Photoshop to copy and paste things but for my magazine I learnt many more useful things about the software. My teachers and fellow class mates helped me navigate particular features of the software and I also taught my self by just practicing and working independently. Photoshop was the best software for constructing and designing my music magazine and learning how to use basic tools was very helpful to me.

As pre-production to making my magazine, there were a number of various equipments and technical devices I used. In the studio were I took all my pictures these are names of some of the apparatus’ I used: a Bawens Gemini Espirit GM500 Flash, Bawens radio trigger, 60cm Soft box, Circular reflector (for some photos) and of course the camera a Canon Eos 400d.



Canon Eos 400d

 

60cm softbox

 Bowens Gemini Espirit GM 500 flash



After gathering my models, we went to the studio and took pictures. I had a few props microphones and sunglasses. These were really suitable as they are things that can be associated with music and music artists. Also, I brought the props to diversify the look of my pictures as I knew I was going to take all my pictures in the studio. I chose to do this as I liked the look of the dark blue background in the studio. All my pictures were taken with a Canon Eos 400d even the ones that were not included in my magazine. Using this camera was not too difficult for me, learning how to take pictures that were in focus was what I struggled with at first but soon after I mastered it. To achieve the best possible photos I had to make sure I kept a steady hand when taking my photos because if you move the camera quickly, the pictures end up looking indistinct.  I made sure I took a range of different shots including medium and long shots, portrait and landscapes, two shots and single shots of my models and medium close up shots.




Landscape

Portrait

When I had taken a good thirty photos, I was given a card reader to insert the memory card into. After I had done this and I had saved my pictures onto My Desktop I began to look through my pictures to find potential ones worth including in my magazine. As the majority of my pictures came out really well and I had various poses of my models, at first it took me a long time to decide on which pictures to use. I asked a few people on what pictures they liked best and this helped a little bit. Once I had whittled my photos down to ten potentials I used ‘Microsoft Office Picture Manager’ to make any necessary alterations e.g. crop and auto brightness.  

Before 'Auto Brightness'

After 'Auto Brightness'

Subsequently after, I started work on my music magazine front cover. I placed a long shot image of my models as my front cover image. Using toolbars like the ‘Type Tool’ was simple and I used it to type my masthead, cover lines etc. I also used this tool on my contents page and double page spread. On all three of my pages (front cover, contents page and double page spread) I had to use the ‘Move Tool’ to obviously move images, textboxes etc around. Photoshop is a very complex software (especially for a beginner) so I didn’t do anything too complicated. This was alright for me as I wanted to go for a simple look with my music magazine.

'Type tool'

'Eye dropper tool'

'Move tool'



For my front cover I needed to insert a barcode as this is something that is standard so I used the famous search engine ‘Google’ and got images of barcodes I selected the one I wanted, saved it as a picture on my computer and then opened it in Photoshop, moving it to where I wanted with the ‘Move Tool’. 

As the backgrounds of all my photos were very dark blue/black I didn’t have to colour the background of my front cover. I simply used my photo to cover the whole page. My contents page and double page spread however had to be filled with a background colour and I picked black. Whilst creating my three pieces I made sure that I used constant fonts, Times New Roman and Mistral fonts that were legible and sophisticated. To make my masthead, cover lines, headline, by line and selling line look more noticeable I added effects to them e.g. around my headline on my double page spread, effects like ‘Drop Shadow’ and ‘Bevel and Emboss’. To get the same orange colour on all three of my pieces I used the ‘Eyedropper Tool’ which matched the orange colour and make things look professional and even.

Effects used: Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow and Bevel and Emboss

To make sure the sizes of my texts on all three of my pieces were of suitable size, I printed off hardcopies of my pieces.



Printscreen of my completed front cover in Photoshop





 

Printscreen of my completed contents page in Photoshop

Printscreen of my completed double page spread in Photoshop