AS Media

What have you learnt from this task?This is my second time of doing this process as I am redoing the course so this gave me a slight advantage as I knew what to expect and knew how to complete the task efficiently, however I have learnt to manage my time better this time round and have found it easier to get tasks done in a sufficient time. I have also learnt a few more things about Photoshop for example I took the picture for my front cover against a white background so instead of cutting the model out of the background and putting her on the blank page I learnt to change the opacity of just the background and not the model and make her against a completely white background which saved me some time. Also when doing my draft contents page I used a different picture and again instead of cutting the model out and putting her on to a blank page i changed the opacity of the whole picture so it was a faded picture so i could put the words over the top and still be able to read all the text on the page. I also learnt how to use the Polygon Lasso tool to cut pictures out of backgrounds instead of just the quick selection tool which is a lot easier and quicker which helped me.

How have you used technology?
I used an Olympus camera to take all my pictures with. My practice shots, my front cover pictures and my contents page pictures. I used Photoshop to edit all my photos, I changed the contrast, brightness and saturation of my pictures on Photoshop to make them look brighter and more professional. I also changed the colour of my models eyes to enhance them and make them stand out on the page as well as making her teeth whiter and her skin look smoother, so it looked more like an actual magazine picture rather than just a picture i took and uploaded.

What conventions have you used and why?I used just about all of the main conventions of a magazine front cover, I did this to make it look as professional as possible and not just like a picture with some words over the top. I did this by looking at existing college magazines to get ideas of conventions, I also looked on my old blog from last year to get ideas from my magazine last year and to see any old notes about conventions.
My masthead is bold and bright to stand out and catch the eye of the 'audience'
I tried to put on as many feature stories as i could to make it look full and to fill up as much white space as i possibly could, i learnt from my mistakes last year as my college magazine last year was very empty and didn't look exciting at all so i tired to change that and make it different from last year.
I put a plug on with an advert to win a dance top to appeal to my audience since the magazine is a dance edition.