I had to create a front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph relating to the school theme, plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. I was very excited to start my preliminary task as I love photography and I am always reading and cutting up magazines, so this was right up my street!
The first thing we did was get all the camera equipment out, which included the camera, the lights, the backdrop and the tripod. We learnt how to use all of the equipment and the different techniques along with it, which included the different camera lenses, the aperture, lighting, rule of thirds and angles. The camera that I used was a Canon EOS 700D.
Then I had the tough decision of choosing a name for my magazine, however, after a long and hard think, I had my name, "Ed's Mag". My school is called St. Edmunds College, so this is where my inspiration came from. After finding my name, I drew out a sketch of what I wanted my cover to look including the words and phrases I wanted to appear.
I went onto a website called "Dafont.com", which is a website where you can find a variety of fonts. So after looking on here, I had chosen 6 of my top favourites.
Then I had to narrow it down to my favourite one, which was going to appear as my masthead on the front cover. This was a font called "Kingthings Organica".
During one of my Media Studies Coursework lessons, I went out with the camera to take my pictures. I took lots of pictures from a variety of angles and positions, so that when it came to choose my preferred picture, I had a good selection to choose from.
These were some of my experimental photos:
I then picked my favourite:
The next step was to upload this picture to "In Design", a programme used for desktop publishing. This was where I created my whole front cover. This was also the first time that I had used "In Design", so it took me a while to get to grips with it. I am such a perfectionist, so for me the picture had to be perfect. Also, from personnel experience, when I buy magazines, the picture is what grabs my attention, so I wanted mine to look just as appealing. I then played around with my masthead and it's size, colour and position, created a colour scheme, added drop shadows, emboss effects, lighting, fonts and sizes and additional images. My colour scheme consisted of different shades of blue and a few other additional colours, which were all able to compliment each other well. I then added my captions using different fonts in a variety of sizes and colours.
This is indesign:
After perfecting it about 100 times, I was happy to say that I was finished and pleased with my end result.
This was the final result of my magazine:
The most important thing I learnt from this preliminary task was that the photography had to be spot on, especially with the use of the different camera shots. The biggest challenge I faced in my preliminary task was being patient with the camera when taking the pictures, and also understanding softwares such as "In Design". I know that in my main production, I will be learning about many more softwares such as Photoshop, so I know I am going to have to be patient when it comes to this. The skills learnt here in my preliminary task are the skills that I will continue to develop and learn about so that when it comes to my final production I will know exactly what to do and how to use them much more effectively.
