Contents Page - Mock Up

This is our mock-up contents page. We used a font called 'Got Heroin' as it looked artistic and bold. We downloaded this font from www.400fonts.com. We then decided to put the different subjects into sections of their own so students can easily look at what they're interested in. Then we used Photoshop to copy the sub headings and flip them so they looked like reflections. This makes it look more interesting and creative. We thought of potential titles and topics that the magazine would contain and put the page number and title of article on the left side and the description on the right side. Then we used the photos that we took to create an interesting header. The bottom has been rubbed off with the eraser tool roughly to make it look different and interesting. We did the same for the small photos to follow the same style. We chose the colours red and white for the font as they stand out well on the black background. Overall the page looks quite crowded as the different sections are placed a bit randomly. We could try to tilt the sections and make the placement look random on purpose. We used italics and different colours to make significant things stand out to the students in the descriptions and we also made the page numbers bold so it stands out to the viewers and easy to find.

Construction Example - Anita

I used Adobe Photoshop CS4 for this task.

I combined these four photos in Photoshop to represent the four subjects that our magazine is about. I used the magnetic lasso tool to select around the person and I copied them and pasted them all on the first photo in different layers. I then used the eraser tool to go around the person to make the clones look neat and also more real. After I was happy the photo was neat enough, I merged the layers by clicking on 'merge visible' and making sure all the layers were shown beforehand. I then put a mask on the person right at the back to represent drama. I got a photo of a mask from the internet and then cut and pasted on the face of the person. I used 'free transform' to change the size of the mask.

This is what I got when I merged the layers together. The colours in the photo don't stand out that much so i increased the contrast and brightness of it. I then added a lighting effect to make the middle of the photo stand out and so that it would gradually go dark at the edges. I used the light 'Omni' and lowered the intensity of it so that we get a dark feel to the photo.

This is the final image I got. It works well as the colours stand out against the white background. However, the lighting effect makes the viewer focus on the people who are centralised in the photo. The photo is also a long shot that shows all of the person.

Construction Example Daniel Mija

Front page draft design - incomplete

This is the first draft design that we made of our front cover of our creative arts student magazine. We used our own photos to make this and played around with the colours of the master head and text. Blue, black, white and grey are colours that we will probably use as they are quite versatile and also calm and mellow and suit the magazine content. We used the same house style as our initial idea mock up drawing and put three photos on the right side as polaroids and the text on the left side. We haven' put much writing on this and it isn't well constructed. The front page photo has been edited, we used the filter Dark Strokes on Photoshop to make the shadows in the photo stand out. Although this isn't the same photo we wanted to use for our final front cover, it still looks good as it is appropriate to our magazine. However, it is mostly about music so to improve this and make it so it appeals to a large target audience, we are still planning to make a photo-manipulation that will show all of the subjects that are included in the magazine, which are Art, Photography, Music, and Drama.

Colour Testing

Colour is an important part of a magazine as it can establish who the magazine is aimed to, or what it is about. We would have to choose the right colours to suit the magazine and make the viewer feel particular emotions.

Picture Practice

We have chosen our first initial idea of a creative arts magazine for students. We took some photos to give an impression of what type of content the magazine will have.

We took these photos to represent the music part of our creative arts magazine. We took photos of each other as we couldn't get other people to take photos of at such short notice. A flash was used in most of these as it was getting dark and there wasn't much ambient light at the scene to get a clear and well focused photo. We brought a guitar with us to use in our photos so that the viewers can get an impression that it is about music. A tripod was also used in some of these photos. These photos aren't manipulated at all, however, in some of the photos, the sky looks as if it's been changed. The sky is a very interesting colour and the colours and quite interesting. These photos have a quite dark feeling as the colours used are mostly blue and black. the angles are varied and we tried to use different proximities and tried to incorporate different perspectives in the photos. We could take photos another time in the morning to get a different series of images and to create a different, more happy atmosphere with the warm tones from the sun.

These photos are to represent the drama part of our magazine. We used happy and sad masks in these photos to get the two different types of drama, comedy and tragedy. We could take photos of drama productions for this area as it is a student magazine and we could show school productions etc. These photos don't work particularly well as the cloak is the same colour as the background ad the person doesn't stand out as much as we wanted out to. However, we could manipulate this so that the background is completely black and so that we can't see the curtains. Another interesting idea we had to manipulate this was that we could cut the person in the sad mask photo and put it in the same photo as a happy mask one. This would create an obvious contrast which the viewers would find easy to recognise as the symbol for drama.

These photos show the arty side of our magazine. We took photos of art students working (with their permission) and two of our group members looking at some paintings to get the feel of an art gallery. We used different angles and proximities including long shot as well as mid shots. These photos contain a lot of colour, which we can emphasise by increasing the contrast of the photos.

Photography is also an important part of our student magazine. We could have features showing students different photographic techniques and how to use them in their work. We could also show a made up photographers work. Some photography techniques could include macro photography, black and white photography, or give them tips on how to take photos in different compositions or perspectives. For these photos, we would need a macro lens, and other photographic equipment to make our photos look professional.

Font Testing

http://www.400fonts.com/

Megan's questionnaire analysis

Ravi's Questionnaire and Analysis

student magazine annotation-MEGAN

Deconstruction of student magazine - Ravi

Our individual blogs for Mrs.Lloyd

Daniel's Blog

Anita's Blog

Initial idea mock-ups

These are the scanned drawings that we made of our three initial ideas. The first is a magazine for creative arts which has a long shot photo as a front cover of a person performing all the arts that will be included in the magazine. This will include art, photography, music and drama/performing arts. The magazine will be called Artistique. We would use an elegant font to reflect that the magazine is all about creativity. The main colours would probably black, white cream and other mellow colours. We don't want to use red or other bold or bright colours for this as it wouldn't suit the artistic type of magazine. The page would have about three scattered photos at the right side in style of a Polaroid to show and influence of photography. One of these photos would be the compulsory mid-shot of a student. Some more text would be on the left side of the page.

The second idea is of a magazine all about upcoming events. We thought of the abbreviation UCE of Up Coming Events to use as our magazine name. The front cover for this could be three different people, a footballer, a musician and a photographer. This could show how the magazine is targeted to different groups of people. We wanted to use a bigger and bolder font to ensure that it stood out. We might also add a shadow to it to emphasise the name of the magazine. We wanted each of the magazines to look different so we changed the layout. This magazine would have a triangle at the right corner so that it would stand out and we could put the price and issue number in it. The photos could be at the bottom of the page along with the text. One of these would be a mid-shot of a student as well.

Our third idea is targeted to science students which include the subjects chemistry, biology, physics and psychology. We decided to call it ScienceOlogy so it sounds interesting. We recognised a big target audience as there are many science students in our school. On the front page, we can have a mid-shot of a chemistry student with many chemicals and other equipment, giving the impression of a mad scientist. We want to make it slightly comical so students won’t find it boring. We would have the text on the right side of the page, and perhaps the photos at the bottom or on the left side.

Talking about our Initial Idea's

Initial Idea 3 - General outline

Analaysing front covers of magazines Ravi

Analaysing front covers of magazines MEGAN

'The Uni Student Magazine' deconstruction by Daniel

'The Drama Student Magazine' deconstruction - Anita

This was a magazine I found while doing my research. It is a big influence for our first initial idea as we are going to do a creative arts magazine, but taking it a step further than 'The Drama Student Magazine' and including more subjects into the magazine which we will explain in later posts.

Analysing Magazines Daniel

Questionnaire and Evaluation

Magazine front cover deconstruction - Anita

These three magazines are quite different from each other. We can see this in the way that they are presented. 'Heat' is a gossip magazine and its presentation or house style is quite cluttered with a lot of text and photos. In contrast, the other two magazine front covers don't have any smaller photos on them, only the front cover photo. 'Elle' is a fashion magazine and there is a theme with the colours used such as blue and cream as the background and main text and black and white for the other text. Jennifer Aniston is in a particular location and the photo looks more natural in contrast with the other two studio taken photos. 'Rolling stone' is a music magazine and is more simple and basic compared to the other two covers. the colours used are more masculine (red, grey, black) however, it would also appeal to women as Zac Efron is on the front cover.

Anita's Questionnaire and Analysis

Initial Idea 2 - General outline

Initial Idea 1 - General outline