Preliminary Plan

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I did a mock up of the intended design of my magazine. I explained the size, font and colour of each text line, as well as the definition of the components of the magazine, in detail.



I chose the font, 'arial', as it is simple to read for everyone reading the magazine. The layout is based on a standard magazine layout. I chose contrasting and bright colours for the magazine to make it more appealing and for it to stand out more.

Planning Photoshoot For Cover

School Magazine Analysis

Airbrushing

BeforeAfter

Using the gassian blur tool and layers, I used photoshop to edit images of women, which would be appropriate for a magazine cover. Skin was blurred to smooth the woman’s complexion and her features were sharpened using the burn tool. Her hair colour was changed by painting on top of a new layer. I discovered if gassian blur tool was used, instead of a soft light or overlay effect on that particular layer, the hair colour looked more realistic.

Brushes And Semiotics.

Using brushes, downloaded from the internet, I created an icon and banner which will be used for my blog. The gradient tool was used to create the fade out affect and different layers were used to created the background. I used a colour scheme of pink and white and gave a shadow effect on the text to make it stand out, particularly at the word “blog” as it was hard to see on the lighter background. I also used an orential theme to keep a consistancy between my banner and my icon.

Semiotics can be defined and seperated into three separate catagories:

Icon – these show what they represent i.e no smoking sign

Symbol – this needs to be culturally learned as it does not obviously represent what it is portraying. i.e. Stop Sign

Indexical – Suggestive and connected to what it represents. E.g. smoke to fire

Image Editting

Due to the brand written on some of the items in the before image above, it is not suitible for use in a school prospectus. Using the clone tool, I editted out the visible branding and the person exiting the frame in the top left corner. I then cropped it to avert the focus on to the main subjects, the girls in uniform.

Colour popping, also known as colour filtering, is when an image remains is seemingly greyscale and only one, or a few colours, remain. This is useful for drawing attention on to a point.

In publications, fonts are important. The type of font used can convey the magazine’s image and audience persona. The above fonts are mainly of the decorative type, “crackman” and “rocky horror” are specialised fonts that were created for one project, pacman and the film rocky horror picture show. A serif font is the use of “flicks” on the end of letters, for example, Times New Roman.

Sans serif is font without the “flicks”, Arial. The above fonts can be downloaded from various websites.

By creating another layer, with a low opacity, I could create a rainbow effect to the photos taken during the lesson. Using different colouring effects, I could blend the top layer to make it look more fluid and blended, in this case soft light.

Image Analysis

In my first week of AS media, I learnt about image analysis, the denotation or connotation of an image. The detonation is what is presented in the image. For example, the denotation of this image, the main subject is a man, a known politician, is photographed in front of an important government building. The building on the background seems to be producing smoke and flames from the roof.

The body language of the man is cross armed and his body is facing the center-left. The colours of the picture have been altered to fit the purpose of the image, the use of the stars represents the American flag. The connotation is the meaning behind the image, for example, the burning government building shows the fall of the economy.

We then learnt about mise-en-scene, the arrangement of the frame and the why the shot is designed in that particular way. For example, the burning building and the reason it is located behind his back, the suit the man is wearing. This is not to be confused with composition, which is what is in the shot. E.g. a man, the use of text and a burning building.

In our first lesson, we also learnt about the type of shot the image is. For example, this image is a mid shot, as its waist up and the main subject takes up ¾ of the image.