Preliminary Task

Preliminary Task Drawings- Pulse Magazine

Initial drawings

This is a draft of what my college magazine 'Pulse' front cover will look like, with annotations of the subheading, masthead etc. I want to follow conventions of magazine covers, with an MCU of someone, and then the article titles presented around the image, maybe overlapping, but if any overlapping did occur, it wouldn't block out any main features of the person/people in the image.

These drawings were created in lesson time, I then had to take photos and use photoshop to make it look similar to the drawings. 

Photo shoot for prelim task:

I chose to use the last image for my front cover because it's an MCU which follows the general conventions for an image on the front cover of a magazine. I also picked it because of the model's expression, she looks really cheerful and she looks natural, which I think is important.

I didn't like the grey background of the image, so I edited it on photoshop and made it blue.I feel that it makes the image a bit more warm and inviting, than the dull grey which connotes boredom and a lack of interest.

Finished magazine cover and contents page:

I laid out the contents randomly as I think it makes the page a little bit more interesting.

I also used my own pictures, that illustrated the other articles on the contents page.

Evaluation

I think that the I followed my original hand drawn drafts quite well in photoshop and I'm glad I drew them before starting to take photos and edit because if I hadn't drawn out my idea first, I would have been completely lost as to where I would place the pictures and what I would write.

Due to the editing of the photographs and general composing of the pages, I am now accustomed to photoshop and I understand the basics and even some of the harder tools on there.

Personally I think that I did the front cover fairly well, but I dislike that there is so much space between the banner and the masthead.

I also dislike the Contents Page as there is too much background space, but I was unsure of how to lay it out without it appearing too chaotic, cramped and difficult to read. I was also unsure of how to place the images and whether to overlay them or not. I think that colour wise I've arranged them well as the colours are separated and don't clash, which makes the page easy to look at. The pictures on the left and right draw the readers eye due to the very light colour, and the very dark colours.

I think I completed this task fairly well and I will learn new things that will help me improve my editing etc for the final construction of my magazine.

For my final magazine I will research more into Contents pages so I know what conventions I'd like to follow/subvert when I create my contents page as I wasn't too happy with the 'Pulse' magazine one.