Philip's blog

For my preliminary task, the College Magazine, I researched existing magazines, college and school magazines particularly, using the standard and conventional features magazine must have. I followed the fundamental magazine conventions which allowed my magazine to relate to others of its kind. For example, the title top of the front cover and contents page, it had to be large and obvious in order to attract the reader’s attention.

For all 4 backgrounds of my magazine, I left the background white with a light blue fade stroke across the page. This is conventional as it is just two solid colours with a neat and professional look. It also does not divert the attention of the reader from the fundamental focus to the magazine.

My use of images and font relating to the cover story had to be the largest to stand out the most to catch the attention to it for the readers in order to be attracted in it.

Having done my the preliminary task, it helped me understand better about the conventions and essential details I had to pay allot of attention to for it to be a well produced magazine, it also helped prepare and feel more confident about the task since I already had a basic idea of how to create and organize, it gave a good trial and error opportunity to make mistakes and be able to correct them to professional standards on my own in the future, for example, The colour of font I used for a story was the same colour as the background, this made the text very hard to see on a printed copy, I was then able to correct this and make the colour more obvious and clear to read.

Prior to beginning the construction of my music magazine I did allot research on existing buyable magazines, as I chose to do a Mainstream magazine I looked at magazines of that particular genre only. Again, I follow the conventions and uses of different techniques on them, like the use of colour which tended to be bright and vibrant as it suited to the particular genre of magazine. In addition, for this task I paid more attention to the age and life style of my target audience; the magazine was aimed at young adults of 15 to 20 year olds who are interested in mainstream. I used bright sharp colours and eye-catching fonts as it would attract a suitable audience. Also the mode of address was casual and easy to understand. In terms of the design of my pages, I wanted to keep it conventional. Even so I made it interesting and I added a decent level of personality to the magazine for the readers to recognize and enjoy the styles on it.

Working in media production contexts

During the hours I had in lesson time I decided to work on research and planning (layouts, use of colours,) I took advantage of the teachers knowlage to help me in case of such a situation, while I used my own time to do the practical work such as photo shoots.

Having borrowed Equipment like camera and lighting it allowed me to plan and arrange photoshoots and work on my own. I arranged the photo shoots inside school, I asked some friends to stand as models and pose for the pictures, using them as models for the cover story, I had a many pictures and in several locations wearing different outfits, however I then realized the majority of them had roughly the same colours and different tones around them, which made them look very similar, Also, the shots did not vary much at all, the majority were mid-shots and involved only one person in the picture. However, I got over this by giving them very different poses to do. I tried to arrange another last minute photo shoot, with other diverse students which I used in my contents page . The front, colour and contents page were already done before I started with the photoshoots, this made it more challenging for me I had to work around it instead of working around the pictures, meaning it made the photoshoot difficult to do because I had to think of poses and locations that would go with it, when I realized the pictures were not suitable for the layout of the design, I had to make some changes and not use some of the pictures I considered were best for the magazine.

whilst working on the pages for my magazine I tried to follow my flatplans as much as I could, however, due to the mistakes I made while taking the pictures I had to make changes, making the final pages differ completely to the original flatplans, I noticed that I should have followed them while doing the photoshoots or plan the kind of pictures I needed to fit with it, it would have made everything easier and I wouldn’t have ended up having with good unused pictures and the correct ones instead.

From the beginning I tried to follow a plan to keep me on track and finish my work in time, although the fact I relayed too much on editing, I spent the time I planned to use in case I had to re-do or add any details, working on the pictures trying to make them fit with the rest of work; this, taking 3 times longer than I presumed, stopped me from improving my work. In terms of time management, I could have done much better, spending my time more on actually working and doing trials instead of mostly doing research and planning.

For my main task, The choice of font was very important.It makes or breaks the whole design in my opinion. It had to suit the design of the page. For my task, I used only one font on the front cover because Typically the human eye likes simple looks. I tend to personally get lost when I see more than two fonts on the page so usual I skip to the next page. Also, Many fonts distract the reader and as a result it looks unprofessional.

This is a good example.
In this VIBE magazine, I can only spot two fonts. The title of the magazine is a different font to the subheadings and text. I notice here that the bigger text including the title is yellow. The layout of the page is quiet neat. The position of the text are well placed and is inviting for the reader.

The font of my title is the same as every other word on the page. This is because it looks neat and tidy and therefore, attracts the reader. The sizes of the text are mostly different. Using common sense, The more important headlines and stories are much bigger.