1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

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

AS MEDIA UNIT G321PRELIMINARY TASK – Cover and Contents of a College Magazine

PRELIMINARY TASK EVALUATION

EXAMPLE

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product?

Masthead

Cover Lines

Dominant Image [rule of thirds] & Plain background

Barcode/price/website

Differences with front cover

• My magazine has a different use of selling and cover lines. My college magazine has selling lines to connect with students who go and want to go to college. Also I have used a student as my main image.• I have used a variety of colours to attract my audience of both genders.

• I have used a medium close up shot of a male, his facial expression makes him look friendly. The celebrity used on Men’s Health’s cover looks tough and is standing in a position where he looks like he is about to use violence.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? contents page

Masthead for contents page

Features from front cover

Text layouts

Sup-headings

Extra information

Differences with contents page

• My contents page is completely different in terms of layout and colour. I have used a variety of colours as I did with my front cover, Men’s Health used only a few colours to make it stand out more.

• My images indicate what is inside the magazine but it isn’t really clear, Men’s Health did the same but is more clear because it uses pictures of body parts and exercising.

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

The preliminary task has taught me how to use Adobe Photoshop CS6. This software helped me create the homepage for my magazine. I learnt how to create shapes, stroke letters/words to make them stand out, and how to manipulate images. Adobe InDesign CS6 was used to make the contents page, using this software, I learnt how to insert images and how to export them into a different file type.I also used a digital camera to get the right shots I wanted, I also had to think about the angle of the camera. I also looked at other magazines to get an idea as to what I want for a college magazine.

Using the digital camera given, I was able to capture a medium-close-up so that the student in the picture took up a lot of space on the magazine. I made sure that his face was seen so that the reader can see that the students face because I feel like it wouldn’t give anyone a negative view of how the students look. However, I think I could have moved the image down slightly so that the masthead isn’t covering the models forehead. I could have also make the colours darker and not stand out as much so that the image is seen a lot better and to make my front cover look more like a magazine.

I used Adobe Photoshop to insert text and shapes around my chosen student to make him look more of a model for a magazine cover. This shows how I used Photoshop to alter my image so that it looks better than it did.I placed shapes and text of all kinds of colours to make the magazine brighter and more noticeable. I also changed the fonts so that the masthead and cover lines don’t look the same and are can easily be said which is which.

Using InDesign for my contents pageThe font used for the masthead is in the style of someone’s handwriting to make it more obvious that this college magazine is aimed at students. I thought about layout very carefully which is why I have spaced everything out very neatly, however, I think that I could have included more to say that there is more in the magazine instead of only 16. I made the ‘Contents Page’ and the coloured box behind it first because I felt it would be the easiest part on the page. I then, placed the images on the

page so that I know how much space I would have for text. I think I could have chosen better colours to make it look more like a professional magazine and so it can be eye-catching. I think the text has been laid out quite well because it looks neat and doesn’t look messy. But I think that the text at the bottom, ‘Get the best education’, wasn’t really needed or important and could have been replaced with more information and page numbers as to what would be inside the magazine.