Contents page plan

After I had finished the planning and editing of my magazine cover I needed to to start making a plan of my contents page. I needed to include the editorial pillars of my magazine which were 'NEWS', 'STUDY', 'LIFE' and 'YOUR SAY'. Under the editorial pillars I needed to put my cover lines and add two more features that would be in this issue but not mentioned on the cover( 'Do You Need Relief From Stress', 'Your Letters' and Q and A'). Just like a conventional magazine I included the page numbers so the reader knows which page they need to turn to for a particular cover line story and included pictures to further help illustrate what the stories are about visually.

The title 'CONTENTS' will be in a Sans Serif font - 'Impact' like some of my coverlines of my magazine cover to tie the two together along with the Masthead on the cover.

EDITORIAL PILLARS will also be in 'Impact' and purple but smaller than the title but larger than the features.

STORIES will be in Kicker and Explanatory form in black 'Times New Roman'.

TWO IMAGES showing and putting emphasis on the main cover line/stories to give the reader a sense of what they are about. I will have a image of st marylebone letters to illustrate the feature on the postal strike showing how the post is getting backlogged and key letters and information may not be getting through. The other image will be of two students studying with one looking like she is struggling with work to show the issue the feature of the Sixth Form Survival Guide will address - the target audience of sixth form students will identify with this scene as they too may feel like they are struggling with A level work and may want to read about how thay could improve.

PAGE NUMBERS will be in the left bottom corner in white on the images to illustrate where you can find the main features. ('Impact' but larger Font size than the page numbers)

ELLIPSIES - I will use ellipsies from the last kicker or explanatory of a editorial pillar to guide the readers eye line to the page number.

Second Draft

After receiving feedback and evaluating my magazine i found that I needed to start making a few changes to 'Sixth Sense' for improvement.

The Changes:

1. The 'REVISION TIME' kicker was not clear enough so I needed to put a black shadow behind to make it stand out.



2. The main cover line kicker 'Sixth Form Survival' was cutting across the bottom too much so I repositioned the main Cover line to fix this.



3. I needed to add or change a cover line with direct address so as to connect more personally to the target audience of 16 - 18 year olds. Therefore I changed my second cover line to use direct address. I didn't add another cover line as suggested as I felt that if I put another cover line on the cover it would crowd the space and make the cover too busy and distracting.

Feedback and Evaluation

After completing my first draft of 'Sixth Sense' I needed to see how effective I had been so I needed to collect feedback from my target audience (Sixth form students), in order to see where i had employed the techniques well and where the areas of improvement were in order to make changes later in my second draft. I also evaluated my magazine to analyse myself whether I've been using the correct conventions or whether i could revise my approach to editing 'Sixth Sense'.

Feedback

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First Draft of my magazine - 'Sixth Sense'

After following my plan I found I had to make some slight changes such as putting a black shadow behind my explanatory text for my Postal strike cover line and a white shadow behind the Date line. This is so that it wouldn't blend in with the image as it was doing making illegible to the reader. I also had to reposition the layout of my cover lines so that it wouldn't interfere with my main image and so that it would conform to the rule of thirds. The fonts i decided to use whilst editing is 'Impact for my two cover line kickers with 'Ariel' explanatory. Impact is thicker than Ariel so it easy to distinguish. I decided to use the decrotive font of 'Birth of a hero' font so that it will stand out and relates visually to its topic of my main coverline. I used the impact font as explanatory as it neexded to be thick so it wouldn't be over powered by the decrotive font.

After this first draft i will need to evaluate and recieve feedback in order to see what needs to be improved.

Magazine Plan

My magazine plan:

Magazine Plan

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My school magazine: Editing my main image.

Before / After

After I uploaded my main image for my magazine cover onto the compurter I started to edit my image to make it more suitable for my magazine cover.

I needed to make sure my image was within the limits of size 'A4' for the magazine cover so I went to 'File' and opened a 'blank' new window adjusting its size to A4.

Before I could start to use the editting tools on photoshop I needed to copy the image by selecting it with 'Ctrl+B' then copying it with 'Ctrl+C' before pasting with 'Ctrl+V' onto the new opened A4 size photoshop window. However i noticed that my main image of the model was not giving a lot of space for the 'Right third' of which i was planning to place my coverlines to take advantage of the western eye flow. Therefore I flipped the image by while using the 'arrow' to resize the image i sized it back on itself causing the image to flip over. This put the side with more space on the 'left third' spacious enough for my planned layout for my coverlines.

After i fixed the size and spacwe problems I started to edit my image:

1) 'Enhance' -> 'auto layers' - so that Photoshop would automatically fix the layers so i don't have to worry about it.

2)'Enhance' -> 'auto contrast' - so that Photoshop would automatically fix the contrast so I don't need to worry about that.

3) 'Adjust lighting' -> 'Shadows/Highlights' - I adjusted the shadows to be darker and increased the mid tone slightly to make the lighting scheme more visually effective and clearer.

4) 'Hue/saturation' -. 'photo filter'- I adjusted the colour of the image giving it a slight black and greeny-yellow hue to make the location and model look visually more appealing fixing the quality of the skin tone.

5) 'Lighting levels' - i fixed the light levels enhancing the light level to a suitable amount as my photo had been taken outside but under the pavilion making it darker and shadowed. By increasing the light levels i made the image more clearer.

6)'Burn Tool' - i used the burn tool to darker my models eyelashes and eyebrows to make them stand out and to bring attention to her eyes and so the connotation that she is looking forward to the future in her academic path.

7) 'Dodge Tool' (right click the 'burn tool' and select 'dodge tool') - i used the 'Dodge tool' to lighten the school work in the folder to emphasise that it is a school magazine promoting and encouraging work and study.

I decide not to use the 'Spot healing tool' and use 'Gaussian blur' to fix her skin as her make up was good enough and i was trying to convey a sense of naturalness so i wanted to re frame from using too much photo shop techniques not wanting it to seem 'put on' or too 'fake' and 'superficial'.

The next step is to start introducing the 'Mast head', 'selling line', 'dateline', 'cover lines' and 'bar code' using the 'Text box' tool.

School Magazine Photo Shoot.

After learning and developing skills of media with photoshop and then techniques of a successful magazine cover we were to then make our own school magazine cover. We were to arrange a time and place to take pictures of a volunteer model to serve as our main image. I arranged for my friend who is in the same class as me to go out during a media lesson and take pictures outside in the st marylebone gardens behind blandford street. I had my friend sit in the pavilion with a folder looking away from the camera. I asked her to do this as I wanted to illustrate my desired connotations of a unrestrictive learning environment and attitude shown by her location and her props of folders full of classwork. I had my friend look away from camera and focus on a point in the distance as i wanted to convey a sense of focus on students academic path in life - an aspiration to do well in the future.

School magazine comparison

We were told to pick two school magazine covers and compare the techniques each used to see which one was more effective. I chose to compare 'COLEDGE' magazine and 'My Colledge' magazine:

COLLEDGE MAGAZINE:
Keeps with the rule of thirds by having the main image of the student centred and in medium shot leaving space for the cover lines and anchoring in the reader’s eye line naturally.
The text is mainly in A Sans Serif Font so that the mast head and cover lines stand out and make it more memorable and recognisable. However it does have a small amount of decorative font compatible with the theme of that cover line feature (Greek letters for the cover line about Greek families). This is to add special emphasis on that cover line.
It also possesses a selling line and a date of issue under the masthead giving it a professional appeal and impression that it is a weekly entity for its college.

MY COLLEDGE MAGAZINE:
This magazine is different as it breaks the rule of thirds by having the model lying down across the bottom and the text mainly centred breaking up the desired anchoring effect for the eyes natural path. The masthead and the cover lines are typed in A Serif Font usually used for long body of texts. Compared with the first magazine it is not as visually effective or memorable as the eye line is not as flowing and the absence of a selling line, date line and barcode suggests that maybe the people in charge of this magazine is not necessarily professional or experienced enough.

Labelling magazine covers

Our second lesson was to learn about the structure of a magazine cover including the names of the techniques used and the names of the fonts and why they are used. I decided to study the music magazine 'Q Magazine'. I chose this magazine as it is a well known music magazine - one of the best selling music magazines in the British market. I learnt about the the effects of placing the 'coverlines' down the left third (to anchor the natural eye flow of an individual from the western culture). I learnt that the 'Masthead' is the title of the magazine which is normally accompanied by the 'Selling line' and the 'dateline'. I also learnt about the types of different fonts and thier impacts on the reader. Sans Serif Font stands out, Serif font is good for 'Main body text' and 'Decorative Font' is useful for adding special emphasis on a headline.

This was all to help us see the technicalities of creating a magazine cover which will be useful in later work.

The begining of media - photoshop editting

Before and After

At the start of our media A level we were given a lesson into how to edit an image to improve or to edit it to make it appropiate for its given purpose. We were taught how to use Photoshop on a model of a person. 1) First step I did was to create a new layer. 2) I was taught how to use the 'Spot healing tool' to easily edit out any skin blemishes like spots and a nose piercing. 3) I was then taught how to smooth the models skin by using 'Gaussian Blur' (changing the pixels until I found a suitable amount). 4) After I used the 'Rubber tool' to rub the blur off the areas that didn't need to be blurred such as the eyes, eyebrows, lips and her earring. 5) I had to make a new layer for editing the colour of the models eyes(LAYER 2). 6)I had to select the 'Brush tool' making sure that its pixel size matched the size of the models irises. 7) I then needed to choose a colour from the 'palette' that would be the colour i would change the irises to - i chose a bright blue (the models original eye colour was green). 8) After I had chosen i used the 'Brush tool' to go over the models irises. 9) This covered the irises with big blue circles so i needed to use 'Soft light' and change the opacity down to about 40% to make the new eye colour more realistic and not look like just a big blue blob over the irises.