Michael's Preliminary to Final Product

My skills of the use of technology have improved considerably since the preliminary task of creating a school magazine. I have now seen how much time and effort is needed to create the perfect music magazine. From the layout and house style to the journalist entry; in order for my magazine to be successful.

My use of technology has improved noticeably. I now know how to navigate Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004 at a steady pace. By using this software, I managed to conjure up ideas for a house style and layouts for each of the magazine front covers, contents page and the double page spreads by using certain tools like the lasoo tool where I was able to cut out the head of my model on the front cover out and paste it as another layer so her head would overlap the masthead. This made a dramatic change in the appearance and quality of the magazine from the preliminary school magazine to the finished music magazine. By using the scale tool; I was able to rotate, enlarge and skew both pictures and graphics in order to make my magazine to look professional. This made a dramatic difference to the software that I used for my preliminary. I used word which had several editing tools but I felt restricted. For example I could skew the font but couldn’t create a drop shadow.

As I have no experience in photography, this was probably the biggest challenge for me. When we had decided a structure of how we would stage the photos, I then took it upon myself to try and take photos for my magazine. I had my ideas set out in my head but when it came to me taking pictures, I was useless unable to fulfil my wishes. However, after a lot of practise and advice from fellow photography students, I was able to take a range of pictures from which I then chose the best one. To edit my photos, I used a program called Picasa. Here I was able to edit the lighting of my photos to either increase the light or decrease.

I have also increased my knowledge of internet websites ranging from www.blogspot.com to www.dafont.com. For my preliminary, my knowledge of some of these websites was restricted, and therefore for my fonts I used default fonts already installed on the computer. However, for my final product I was determined to find a font that fitted in with the genre of music my magazine was to portray. I then was able to install the font onto the computer in order to change the size, colour and then edit it with a drop shadow or outer glow.

By researching up on other magazine like Q, Kerrang and Uncut, I was able to read other journalist entries. I made sure that the copy I included in my magazine would reflect on the target audience and inspire them to do well in life. I created a background story on how the duo were forced to leave their record label and become independent and made to put all their hard work and effort in to become well known in the music industry again. The pull quote was made to stand out and draw in the readers’ attention.