SKILLS DEVELOPMENT:
14/09/16
Today I was introduced to Wix.com and learnt how to create my own website using this program. I also learnt how to customise my website by creating main pages and sub-pages, and changing the colour schemes, backgrounds, fonts and how to upload photos.
21/09/16
Our preliminary task was to create pages of an imaginary school magazine using Photoshop. I found this task very useful as although I had briefly used Photoshop before, I learnt about many different tools on there. For example, I learnt how to add effects to text that make it stand out and how to adjust the lighting and colour of an image.
22/09/16
Today I learnt about Serif and Sans Serif fonts and what types of magazines they are typically used in. Serif fonts are slightly curly and decorative and are used in older magazines as they are more traditional. Whereas Sans Serif fonts are not decorative and have a modern appearance so are used in newer magazines to reflect this.
24/09/16
In class we began to research the conventions of music magazine pages (Front Cover and Contents Page). I became aware that these pages are a lot more complex than they appear and that each element of the page has a purpose.
25/09/16
I have learnt that the 'Mise en scene' of a photograph means everything that we can see that constructs the image as 'Mise en scene' is French for 'On the stage'. I also learnt the features of 'Mise en scene", which are props, lighting, NVC (Non-verbal Communication) and setting. I also began to learn how this is important for creating a bands image.
27/09/16
Today I began learning how to write a textual analysis of a music magazine front cover. I had to include knowledge about the mise en scene of the images on the front covers, and explain how other features of it like the colours, sizing and style of the fonts are effective and how they make the genre of the artists evident and help attract audience.This task also helped me to become aware of some of the conventions of Alternative/ Rock magazines, particularly the colour schemes, which will be helpful when I come to create my own magazine pages.
29/09/16
In class, we looked at contents pages of music magazines of the same genre as we are looking at, and analysed the features of it and how the description of each article matched the article itself. We also focused on the images used for contents pages and made a table that reveals if the photos are of groups or solo-artsits, and how many males or females are in them
Today I found some examples of double page spread articles about Alternative/ Rock artists.I noted things like how many photos the page contained, how many columns there are and if there was a pull quote. I also observed whether there were groups of people in the photographs and whether the people in them were male or female. I also paid attention to the colour schemes, layouts and types of fonts used for these double page spreads as this will be useful when creating my own.
01/10/16
06/10/16
In class, we read some ideal reader profiles from well known magazines such as Q and Billboard, to help us to create ideal audience members for our own magazines. This involved selecting an appropriate age range for the magazine and exploring fanbases from this genre in order to follow trends from it.
19/10/16
I looked at a variety of different double page spread articles from similar genre music magazines to my own, to observe their layouts, colour schemes and photographs to give me an idea of what readers from my target audience might like to see. I then used Publisher and Power point to create some rough layout ideas for my double page spread.
21/10/16
Today I learnt how to use 'DaFont.com'. I used this website to start finding some potential fonts that I could use for my double page spread article. I print screened fonts that I thought would work well for my magazine and put them onto my rough layout drafts to give a better sense of what my finished DPS would look like. I also added in some photos that are similar to ones that I would like to take for the article.
01/12/16
I learnt a lot about photography from the photoshoots that I done for my double page spread. I learnt that my camera was on the wrong setting for my first photoshoot, meaning that I had a lot of motion blur and the quality of the images was not high enough for a double page spread. My second photoshoot made me aware about the framing of photos as the model was too close to the camera. I took this information into account which resulted in my third photoshoot being successful.
Photoshoot 1:
Photoshoot 2:
14/12/16
I learnt how to use the polygon lasso tool on Photoshop, which i used to quickly delete unwanted parts of an image. I also learnt how to use the magic wand tool which was very useful for editing out the white backgrounds from my print screens of fonts from Dafont.com.
07/01/17
To remove my model from the background of the original photograph, i was using the polygon lasso tool. However this left harsh, bumpy edges around the outline of the model. Therefore I learnt how to feather the image so that the edges were a lot less harsh. This helped make the page look more professional that what it previously did.
22/01/17
I researched and found out the components of a music magazines contents page and used publisher to create draft layouts of one for my magazine to help decide where to place text and images. This was quite challenging as I had to make sure that the page did not look cluttered with images and that there was enough space for text.
I learnt how to use the patch tool to get rid of unwanted lines on my contents pages main photo and how to add in drop boxes and inner and outer glows on shapes to make them stand out more against their background and look more 3D. I used this on the stars that are on the corners of the images on my contents page to help them stand out againts the background. These stars helped make the page fit in with the Lana Del Rey American flag image and the traditional colour scheme of the Alternative/ Rock genre.
09/02/17
23/02/17
Today I learnt how to use a program called Light Room to edit my front cover photos with because of the harsh shadows that were on my models face. I learnt how to adjust the lighting, shadows, exposure and saturation on the images and how to add and adjust filters. This helped me to create the Lana Del Rey image that I was aiming to create on my front cover.
Before
After
