1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? and conventions of real media products?

2. What have you learnt about the technologies from the 2. What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this productprocess of constructing this product

My Preliminary Task - Front Cover and Contents PageMy Preliminary Task - Front Cover and Contents Page

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?products?

Front Cover - Similarities Front Cover - Similarities

MastheadMasthead

Main cover lines Main cover lines

Main Image Main Image

Consistent Consistent Colour Colour Theme Theme

Front cover - Differences

The marie claire front cover contains a date on the top of the masthead alongside a sell line of the magazine. my college magazine does not contain this.

The position of the two images are different too – the female on Vogue is centred in the middle of the front cover page. Whereas the image of the lad on the front cover of my magazine is positioned to the right of the image to keep in line with the rules of third.

The positioning of the masthead is both different on marie claire and my college magazine. The marie claire masthead fills the top quarter of the magazine. My masthead is positioned in the top left hand corner of the page.

The positioning of the cover lines are both different on my college magazine and the Vogue magazine. Vogue has more cover lines and sell lines than my magazine. The college magazine that I have made are short and snappy and there is less of compared to Vogue.

The pricing of the magazine are different on both the magazines – my magazine is shown as free in the starred bubble, whereas Vogue is £4.00.

The colour scheme on the magazines are both different. The colour scheme of my magazine is purple and white. Vogue’s colour scheme is pink, orange and white. This can be shown through the colour of cover lines and masthead.

My college magazine contains a footer at the bottom of the front cover, whereas the front cover of Vogue does not have a footer. This is because the main cover line takes up this space on the page.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? contents page

Contents

Images

Features

Page Numbers

Masthead

Contents Page - Differences

The colour of the background is different on both my college magazine contents page and marie claire contents page. The purple relates to the colours of the college.

The layout of both SFC Solihull college magazine and marie claire contents page. There is a large amount of ‘dead space’ on the background of my magazine. this could have been used more wisely like marie claire’s contents page.

The colours of the marie claire contents page are very simple compared to the colours on my college magazine. The house colours are used much more subtly but are more effective then the colours that I have used.

The images on the contents pages are used in a more subtle way compared to my college magazine. the layout of where the images are placed on marie claire are easier on the eye as they blend into the whole background.

The name of the magazine can be found at the bottom of the marie claire contents page whereas there is not at the bottom of my contents page.

What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?product?

.

Throughout creating my college magazine front cover and contents page I have learnt about a variety of technologies. I have been able to use a digital camera to capture the specific images that I wanted to use for my magazine. I have been able to adjust the shot size and angle to create a specific type of shot. As the outline of the magazine was to create a MCU of a student, I began to use this as a brief. As well as taking MCU images I was able to take pictures of students from long shots.

With these images I was then able to manipulate the images on Photoshop. On Photoshop I was able to change the levels of the images and then the brightness and contrast of them. After developing more skills into Photoshop I was then able to blur the background of my cover image by using the magnetic tool to frame the lad before blurring.

After creating the front cover I then Indesign to layout the contents page. The Indesign format gave me the skills to adapt my work to a further level.

..

I used a digital camera to take the image of the lad on the front cover of the magazine. The design brief was to take an image that was an MCU of a student. I made sure when I took the picture that I kept it within the rule of thirds. This meant that I took the image with the lad slightly to the right of the camera so the main cover lines can fit in the left hand side of the magazine without covering the image. Another reason why I kept the image to the right of the frame was because I knew previous to taking the image that I was going to have a square masthead that would be placed in the top right hand corner, therefore I do not want to cover the image with the masthead.

I then used Adobe Photoshop CS6 to edit and manipulate the images that I had taken for both the front and contents page. I firstly edited the levels of the images. This created a shaper image and also changed the brightness. However I did not believe that the image was quite right so I edited the image more by adjusting the contrast and brightness levels (this can be shown on the stages of development on my blog). A big disadvantage of my image was the busy background as the image was taken outside and not by a white wall. This meant that I was able to on Photoshop and blur out the background of the image to create a less busy background. I completed this by using the magnetic tool. I then cropped and moved the image to create the frame I wanted to create.

What have you learnt about the What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of technologies from the process of

constructing this product?constructing this product?

Using In-design For my Contents pageUsing In-design For my Contents page

To create the words “contents” I first of all added the word “contents” to a text box. I then changed the colour of the text to green. I chose green because green is one of the college colours. Another reason for choosing green was that the green stands out against the purple and white. However as the contents page shows there is too much purple. After changing the colour of the text I added a drop shadow to create a less flat visual.

The images were edited and manipulated on Photoshop. However when added to the contents page I created a drop shadow on the background to, like the text “contents”, to create a less flat visual. I then added text to the image on InDesign to show that the images have a meaning and to relate them to the magazine.

The features at the top of each section, section off the sections of the magazine and separate them into specific page numbers. The way I have laid out the contents page has created a lot of dead space which could have been used more wisely, for example through a editors letter.