Research and Planning - College Magazine Analysis

1. Are the font sizes correct?
I think the font sizes are suitable for the magazine because they are eye-catching without being tacky and make the magazine look appealing and interesting.

2. Does it follow the three colour rule?
Yes, the colours being red, blue and white.

3. Can you tell the contents page and the cover are from the same magazine?
Yes because they follow the same house style and colour scheme, and also feature photo's of the same person.

4. Are the photographs well taken and appropriate?
Yes because I used a fellow student from the college, which means its someone the audience can relate to and even know.

5. Are there enough stories on the contents page?Are the appropriate?
Yes I think they are appropriate as there is not too many and they go into the suitable amount of detail for people to be interested in. They are also appropriate for the target audience due to the fact they are about everyday things around college and stuff the students can actually relate too and find important. 

Research and Planning - College Magazine Contents Page

This is my completed contents page, it follows the colour scheme of the front page and contains an image of the same person that is on the cover.

Research and Planning - Completed College Magazine Cover

This is my completed college magazine cover. For this I had to use various photo-shop techniques which included cropping pictures, adding text and inserting a masthead. The first thing I did for this task was discover what font I thought best appropriate for the college magazine's target audience. The one I chose is called '28 Days Later' and I think this was a well suited one as it makes the name stand out. Secondly I saved the photo I had taken of my friend (which is a medium close-up) and put it into photo-shop so I could edit it. Once the picture had been added into photo-shop I began editing the picture by using the lasso tool around the edges of her, once I had done so I dragged the selected section of the photo and overlapped it onto my cover. Having done so I edited the photo size and placed it where I wanted on the page. When I had completed all these various tasks I added insert text cover-lines too one side, edited the colours and then saved the file as a JPEG.

Research and Planning - Photos

Research and Planning - Cover and Contents Page Draft

Research and Planning - Masthead Practice

For this exercise I had to find and chose appropriate font styles for the magazines Popworld, Death Metal and Popcorn, each of which are from different genres and types of magazines. To be able to edit this I opened photo-shop and also the website 'Dafonts.com'. Once I had found the fonts I thought most appropriate I downloaded them off the site and put them into the selection of fonts to chose from in photoshop. For the 'Popworld' I used Last King Quest, for 'Death Metal' I used Sketch College and for 'Popcorn' I used 28 Days Later. Once I had done this I created a new document and typed the names of the magazines separately. Once I had done this I customised the colours and sizes and then changed the fonts to the ones I had downloaded. After this I saved the file and changed it too a JPEG.

Research and Planning - Audience Interviews and Analysis of Answers

Question 1 - 
The answers from questioning some fellow college students have told me that they would expect to see various things from a college magazine such as news about what is happening around college and what is going on and that they would expect things that they are interested to appear in it.

Question 2 - 
They would expect that if the magazine was sold on an often occasion to contain regular aspects such as horoscopes.

Question 3 - 
My questioning has shown that they would expect the magazine to be a reasonable price ranging from fifty pence to one pound.

Question 4 - 
My question results also show that in order to appeal to a range of students they would expect it to be of bright colours, appeal to both genders, be eye-catching and contain interesting things.

Question 5 - 
The most suggested colour scheme was either make it bright, simple colours or red, purple and blue.

Research and Planning - Medium Close-Up Examples

These are three examples of medium close-ups used in either films, or in the case of the top one; a photo-shoot.

Research and Planning - College Magazine Analysis.

This is a magazine cover I found on Google. It looks as though it is from an American college, and is named 'College Lifestyle'.
The Masthead - this is the title along the top. The colour of the text is bright yellow, this is eye-catching for potential readers and stands out against the background so it is easy to read and shows the importance and relevance of the magazine; making it stand out amongst others.
The Cover Stories - The cover story advertisements are also using a similar colour scheme to that of the masthead. The ones of relevance to the college such as 'Make Money On Campus' are coloured the same as the word 'College' in the masthead, as is 'College Couture'. However, those written in white - which is the same colour as the word 'Lifestyle' in the masthead are presented in the same colour, ie. 'Why We Love Blackberry' and 'The Worlds Sprint Factory' to show the link to unrelated college articles.
The Main Picture - The main picture is of a young man holding exercise books, he looks as though he is between either the age of late teens or mid 20's, often the age of students in America. Because he is the main picture this gives us an idea of the target audience being that age group. His facial expression connatates to the audience that he is happy and enjoys college life, also giving the impression to younger age groups not yet in college that it is fun and a good environment to be in, this can also advertise the idea of college to those yet to young to have attended it themselves.
The Publication Line/Selling Line - The publication line of the magazine says 'Your exclusive guide to everything hip, hot and happening'. This is used as an attempt to draw the reader in and persuade them to buy the magazine, with use of the words 'hip' 'hot' and 'happening'. They have used these words because it is the sort of slang vocabulary used by teen.
The Bar-code - The bar-code is normally the last thing you look at on a magazine, the price of the magazine is underneath this and shows the price of $4.99. This is roughly the average price of a magazine and normally students have jobs, so are able to afford this price range.

Research and Planning - InDesign Film Review Tutorial

This is my Hunger Games film review which I copied and pasted off the website 'Empire'. I did this piece so I could begin practicing using InDesign. I opened InDesign and went to layout, after selecting layout on the bar along the top of the page I went to 'create guides' and chose the settings in which I wanted the guidelines to be. After doing this I selected 'place' and opened the saved word document, this imported the text into InDesign. Upon doing this I Google searched 'The Hunger Games', copied a picture and placed it on the desktop. I followed the same steps of importing the picture, then to edit the picture where I wanted it to go I chose object, fitting and then fit content to frame, this meant I could move the picture exactly where I wanted it to go without cutting some of the picture off. Once I had done so, I added a title by using the text box and then customizing it by changing the font, colour and size. To finish it off I drew a rectangle, changed the colour of the rectangle to yellow and then moved it to the back.

Research and Planning - Film Poster

For this piece I firstly saved a picture of a previous Harry Potter film advertisement, I then saved a picture of Nicki Minaj and Kim Kardashian. I opened all the files in photoshop and cut out the faces of Nicki and Kim. I dragged the cut out faces over to the Harry Potter poster and placed them over the faces on the poster. After doing this I tilted the faces round slightly and adjusted them so they fit as best as they could. Upon doing this I went to image, then colour balance and fiddled with them so they matched the colours of the posters best as possible. Once I had completed this I changed the format of it to JPEG and then saved it.

Research and Planning - Photoshop Challenge

For the last challenge in research and planning I had to open up a plain A4 paper sheet in photo-shop. Once I had opened the file I used the text tool and wrote 'AS Media Studies' and then selected it and moved it too the centre of the page. I then highlighted the text and changed the colour to red. I used the text tool to move the text and then selected the background layer. Once I had selected the background layer I went to the colour icon near the bottom of the tool selection and changed the colour to blue. To add more effect to the text I highlighted it, went to the layer option at the top of the screen, selected drop shadow and then altered the settings. I then searched 'Kim Kardashian' on google and saved the picture I wanted. I opened the file in photo-shop and then placed it onto the part of the page I wanted. I then changed the hair colour using the paint brush effect so the hair went from black to brown. To finish off the piece I used the paint brush tool again to draw a border.

Research and Planning - Skin Tutorial

For this I began with a picture of a girl who had skin blemishes and no make-up on. I began by opening the file in photo-shop, then I used the spot healing brush tool to make her skin look clear and smooth. Because of this tool her skin looked shiny so to remedy this I changed the Opacity of the picture. This made the picture look better and also more natural. After this I used the paintbrush tool to draw eyeshadow, lipstick, eyelashes and blusher on her face and also to whiten her teeth. I then changed her hair colour to brown, and for this I had to vary the size of the brush. Once I had completed these various changes I changed the file to a JPEG and saved it.

Research and Planning - CD Photoshop Tutorial

For this piece of work I used photoshop. I opened 3 different images which were the background, the horn and the CD. I cut the CD out from its own background and placed it onto the musical note backing. I then re-sized it and did the same with the horn. Once they had been put onto the background I customized the colours of each separate image. I then added some text, changed the colour of it and added a 'drop shadow'. After this I then went onto image and to wave, this changed and distorted the background, also making it more customized. I then saved the file as a JPEG and uploaded it to my blog.