"Skills Development" Essay

Skills Development Essay

For my foundation portfolio I first created the front cover and contents page of a college magazine. I researched into the language, institution, ideology, audience and representation of three different existing college magazines so that I could see how they as successful magazines are created. I then planned thoroughly how I wanted my magazine to look like and who I wanted to target. I then decided on what price and publishing times I should use by comparing existing magazines to my target audience. I then created my magazine and evaluated my work by asking for feedback from my target audience.

            After doing this task I then went on to create a front cover, contents page and double page spread of a music magazine. This consisted of using my newly learnt skills from the first task to create a much more improved magazine that could fit in and be sold along with other existing music magazines. Using similar steps I chose a genre, which was ‘indie’ and then researched into two existing publications with this genre. I took note of the conventions for this type of magazine, as this would be very important when producing my own. I then chose my target audience and price/ publishing details. The target audience was the most important factor, as this would influence how I would choose to make my magazine look like. I chose the age range 15-25 as my target audience. From researching into other music magazines of a similar style I found that the most common target ages are from teen years to early twenties. For example, the magazine NME’s average audience age is 25. I created my magazine to target both genders as indie music is enjoyed by both. By designing the magazine to suit both genders could mean an increase in the number of copies sold. I also looked at social classes and decided my target audience would mainly be the D and E classes. This is because most young people are unemployed due to being in education.

Before starting media studies I believe I had some skill when using computer programmes like Microsoft word and publisher. This was useful as I was able to start my work quickly as I had the basic knowledge of how to use these programmes to be able to publish files. I also had skills in photography and this helped a lot when taking the photographs to be used. I spent the most of my time working on creating my music magazine pages. I made sure my magazine fitted in with the conventions and looked realistic, and after many trial and errors I created three pages that I was happy with. I used Photoshop mainly to construct my products in both tasks.

I had little experience using Photoshop and so I learnt many new useful tricks to help create my final pieces. I practised mock ups of my magazine cover first as I started to learn the basics of the layout of a music magazine. I learnt how to use the text tool, the quick selection tool to ‘cut out’ images and also how to place each object in the conventional place of a music magazine. I used the blur tool and spot removal tool to remove spots and blemishes from the models face. This would enhance the images and allow them to look like part of a professional photo-shoot. I also used the blur tool to soften the edges of the images to allow them to blend in with the rest of the page and not look ‘cut out’. I learnt how to edit the layer properties and add a shadow around the cut out images to make them look more realistic I used the text tool to create my masthead and logo, cover lines and other text. I used the same font to keep continuity throughout my music magazine. For some text I used a different font to emphasise it.

Overall, from looking back at my first task I feel I have improved so much since the beginning of the course. The main thing I believe I have improved on is the use of Photoshop. I have learnt many new things in Photoshop which have allowed my music magazine to look more professional than my college one. For example: I learnt how to use the quick selection tool to cut out an image and place it on a different background. This was something I had not tried during the creation of my college magazine. I have also learnt more about the layout and conventions of magazines. From analysing other magazines it has helped me to create a final magazine that could easily be sold next to real magazine. Looking at my college magazine now, I can see how I could improve it straight away. It looks particularly plain compared to my music magazine and I believe this is because I only knew very little about conventions at the time. E.g. the use of a masthead

As our task was to create not only the font cover but also the contents and double page spread, I believe this has enabled me to learn something new: the importance of continuity from the front cover through to the inside pages of a magazine. When looking at other magazine I could see that the front cover image always relates to the double page spread article and the main images on the contents page. Another use of continuity would be the colour scheme (E.g. I used blue/red/black/white on all pages).This was something I was able to improve on from doing my college magazine front cover and contents. From looking at my feedback I can see that I have accomplished this as 100% of people believed my magazines layout/ colour scheme runs throughout the pages.