YaYa91's Blog

The Print pathway was a creative and suitable option for me and therefore was my first and final option as I felt that I had more knowledge on magazines and its creative outlook than that of the video making pathway. I find myself to be very creative in most things that I do and felt that this was a wise choice because I could experiment and challenge my creativity as well as learn new things. This particular print pathway required me to produce a front cover of a school/college magazine and the layout of its contents page. The front cover was to feature a medium close up of a student with text and a masthead.  In order for me to complete this task I had to carry out research which allowed me to understand what type of audience I am trying to target as well as what is generally required on a front page of a magazine and its contents. My magazine was I aiming to attract an audience of college students around the ages of 16-19 years. I wanted my magazine to be about Harlow College and the goings on both inside and out. I decided to create a college magazine that was based on the things that go on inside of college as well as outside. It would contain tips to aid in revision and incentives such as discounts and places to go with friends etc. I wanted it to show that you can work hard and play hard during your time here at the college. Once I presented my creative ideas to my tutor and fellow peers I began to conduct research on my creative ideas. I researched various front covers and contents pages and studied their choices of layout and text, which gave me an insight to what I would and could include in my construction of the magazine and contents page. I found that many of the magazines such as ‘vibe’ and others had bright, funky colours, and shapes, which I found to be very interesting because there were quite a few magazines that had a minimalistic layout like ‘vogue’ and ‘ cosmo’ and didn’t really have much going on with them and I saw it as boring and I wanted to make sure that my magazine had features that would enable it to stand out and have unique qualities from all the other magazines around it. Also I took time to look at magazines that students are currently reading and found some interesting ideas i.e. the bright, busy look to the cover, which caused the eyes to constantly move across the page and not be tied to one main section.

After conducting sufficient research I felt I had all the information needed to create a media standard magazine and was satisfied with my ideas and planning.  In addition I wanted it to stand out, and this would be achieved by using various colours, shapes, and bold text as I felt that this is what my target audience are attracted to, and would therefore cause them to want to read it. The next step upon completion of my research and planning was to now create a mock up of the front page, which was at first a tricky task as I had little experience in the Photoshop application, which was what needed to be used in order to produce my final construction of the magazine. I was introduced to this application by Renier who set up various tutorials which were specifically made for those who had chosen the print pathway. These tutorials taught and brought me up to speed on the basics on how to edit an original image and turn it into a magazine style photo. The tutorial also educated me on how to manipulate pictures and use many of the applications various elements.  After receiving guidance about the use of Photoshop I became very confident in my approach to using it, and was sure that I could now start creating what would soon be my front cover and contents page. Upon gaining sufficient knowledge on how to use Photoshop, I then began to create a mock-up of the front cover which didn’t start off to well as I hadn’t decided on what image I was going use. I took images from the internet as I had not yet taken my final images and cropped, shaped, resized, and brightened them. I made sure I used images that were of similarity to the final ones I would hope to take and use for my final construction. I also included different shapes like stars, circles, squares etc to make the page have more of a magazine look to it. I added various effects to the cover to give it an edgy look.  I decided to place a rather bold, block masthead to the top centre of the page rather than in one of its corners as I felt that it was well suited and allowed the reader to clearly see what the magazine was called, and not mistake it for one of the features in the magazine. I added a gradient effect to it, which made it stand out a bit more because I felt that it slightly fell into the background.

After to completion of adjusting and editing the pages to a satisfactory standard I was eventually pleased with my final product, and felt that I had produced an acceptable standard of work for my preliminary task. I felt that I had produced a student based magazine considering I had little experience to the whole technology that was needed to create the magazine. I tried to maintain that appearance of youth to my magazine by using colours and features that were appealing to the eye and that would ultimately attract my target audience, and as I fall into that particular category I found that it was a cover that I would look at, pick up and buy. I put most of my research and planning into practice and took on board the pros and cons like whether i wanted to present a simple piece like some of covers i researched or ones that were more upbeat and funky , which is what my target audience were currently into. Constructing the actual pages was a tricky process as I had to make choices of what colors to use and what shapes and size font to include. My Magazine was totally different to my previous draft pages as i got more creative and added little extras like glows and tints to give it more umph. I did however have issues as to whether i should have a whole image for my background or just crop the person out and place it in the centre. This issue arose due the fact that many of the covers I studied in my research and planning had images that where used as the background rather than just cropped and edited. I then came to the decision and chose to crop and place the picture on the side so it looked like the person was hanging, and this i felt it gave a very effective look to the cover, and ave it a unique look as many front covers do not have this approach. Looking back on my magazine research and planning I decided that an issue number, month, and barcode were also to be added to the page as it was a repetitive feature in most if not all of the magazines I looked at in the research  carried out. I had originally decided that I was going to include a price of £1.75 to my magazine, but later decided that the price was somewhat high and lowered it to £0.75 as it was more of an affordable price for all college students.  After putting the sufficient work into the front cover I then moved onto the contents which I had a very difficult time with. In the beginning I gave the contents page the same background and text font as the front cover to show continuity in its layout.

I had a few problems in placing appropriate images to the page as some of them didn’t really collaborate well with the background and other elements, and were not easy to cut around so I took them out and used other images which I felt maintained a satisfactory quality for the page. The images were very easy to cut around and feather so it made it much easier to adjust and use for my final product. I finished by adding a few final touches like dark shadows and glows around some of the texts, and slight glows to the page numbers, which had been edited to my satisfaction and that of the media requirements.  I tried to follow the traditional layout of a contents page as much as possible to avoid confusing the reader, but I found that some elements were better left out such as the usual layout of the text in block spaces with the numbers around them. After creating the first of what I thought would be the only style of contents page, I was advised that my contents page looked like a poster and would therefore need to be manipulated slightly to make it look like one. It took some time to try and figure out exactly what it was that made the page look like a poster. I decided to refer back to my research carried out on contents pages and then try and apply some of what I researched to the contents page in hope of it looking less like that of a poster.I then carried on with my attempt in making the contents page look like less of a poster and more of a magazine and began adjusting the features on the page in hope of achieving this. I placed the images and text in many different places so that the reader’s eye could wander and not be confined to one particular place in the magazine. I also placed large numbers which indicated their assigned pages. I left a few bits of texts without images because I felt that the images would overcrowd the page and cause it to become too busy. In the top right hand corner I added a little editors note which i noticed was included in many young  peoples magazines, and helped it to stand out by placing a square box around it. I moved around the text and added effects to them. I then showed my tutor who then said it had made a significant change from being a poster to now starting to look like a contents page. I made sure that all text and images went together so that there was no confusion as to what feature went with what image. Following th is adjusting and editing i felt that my pages were at the stage of completion and were ready to be printed out.

In order for me to fully complete and evaluate my preliminary task, there was a need to carry out a feedback task which would be in the form of a questionnaire and would accumulate feedback on the thoughts and additional ideas my target audience had towards my magazine. Questions in the questionnaire were qualitative and enabled me to fully understand what my audience liked, and what were some of things I could possible change if I were to reconstruct this magazine again. I created a questionnaire that contained 11 questions that would give me an insight to what my target audience felt about the magazine and what were some of the things they perhaps didnt quite like. The questionnaires were handed out to college students and were collected and reviewed. The feedback i reiceved was very helpful as it showed me the good and bad features on f my magazine. Most students said that they really liked the layout of the magazine and it color use. They felt that the colors went well together and it was fairly priced for the students here at the college. The audience also said that they could see this product in the local magazine shops and thought that if they saw the magazine in a newsagents or college shop, they would buy it for the mere fact that it appealed to students of college and also because they would want to know whats inside. I thought that was something i was originally trying to achieve, and felt pleased with that feedback given. The target audience however thought that the contents page lacked a slight sense of order as some had an issue of knowing if the ext was with or without an image. Overall i recieved an average score of 8.5 out of a possible 10, which to me was a good outcome. I took on board all of the feedback i received and I will now make be able to add ll that i have learnt and been told to my main task. On a whole i feel that this magazine would be at the same level as another college magazine and would definately be something another student would look at seeing as it possess the things that other college magazines currently have and especially what college students are currently into. It is similar in its presentation and layout and has eye catching features that would attract the college student audience. Due to the similarity it has with many other youth magazines ”THA DEAL” will do well if it was to be placed on store shelves.