Skills Development Essay

Within my Foundation Portfolio, I created the front cover, contents page and double page spread of a rock magazine called Rock Revolution which focused on all the aspects of the rock music industry and was aimed at people that belonged within the C1, D, E category of the hierarchy, like most other rock magazines. However, what made mine different to other magazines of that genre is that mine focused more on the upcoming bands rather than the bands that are already out there being successful. In order to do this I used Adobe Photoshop CS5 to manipulate the photos, which I had taken previously to include within my work. I had chosen to use Photoshop because it would ensure me a more professional looking result and ensure that any mistakes that I had made within the shooting of the photos could be altered a small amount to make the problems look less noticeable, which I was in need of within a few of my photos. In order to create my pages I used Microsoft Publisher in order to ensure that everything would be aligned and look professional. I used Blogger to present my work and to show my progression from planning to creation to the finished product.

Before I started AS Media, I had a limited experience with some of the programs that we were going to use. I had previously used Photoshop in small doses for my own leisure at a friend’s home but never used it for a piece of work and I had them there with me every time. Also, I had previously used Microsoft Publisher to do some work within ICT in secondary school but I had never created pages such as what I did with this project. Blogger was a new experience to me too; it took me a while to become familiar with the controls and what was expected of me when posting blogs up.

We were asked to attempt a preliminary task before we took part in the main task, which was to design the front cover and draft a contents page of a college magazine personalised to Wyke College, which would develop our skills so that we would be able to increase the skills that would be required in order to face the main task of creating our own music magazines. One of my friends helped me with my Photoshop skills as she had been taught how to use it within her Photography lesson, so along with the help that I received from my teachers, my understanding of Photoshop was well adapted when it came to the main task. I found that my planning for the preliminary task wasn’t done correctly because I found that I planned lots on paper but never got round to putting it up on Blogger, which I continued to do so when it came to the main task, I continued to plan my ideas on paper as I was explaining to my friends what I was hoping to accomplish, however, the paper versions never managed to get on blogger. This is a lesson that I hope to learn and avoid when it comes to my music video since I have already started planning my video on paper. I found that showing my paper ideas to my teachers and asking them how it could be improved helped me loads because it helped me make my work better as they were able to tell me what was working and what wasn’t. However, I soon found that, planning wise, my ideas were great but realistically they were too advanced for me due to my very vivid imagination getting away from me, which is a flaw that I am worried about with my music video planning. The creation of my work was the hardest as I had forgotten all my previous Photoshop work and needed to learn it all from scratch yet again. I found that picking the skills was easy and due to the genre of magazines I was doing I found that I hadn’t needed to use most of them very much. I ensured to make my products follow the basic conventions of a typical magazine by looking on the internet for a barcode generator, looking at previous rock magazine and getting an average price and putting that on my magazine and making sure to tell the readers of my magazines what is occurring within the magazine and what will be in the following weeks magazines.

Throughout the planning stages of my magazines I compared my magazine to existing rock music magazines in order to gain inspiration of the conventional items to put inside it, I took my insight from magazines such as: Kerrang, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Rocksound which were all really helpful when it came to what I was supposed to put inside my magazines. This is because they were all from different aspects of the rock music scene, therefore they all included different things and gave me different thoughts which I manipulated and created my own concoction of rock music by adding a variety of articles from each of the magazines. For example: the section on letters and pictures from the readers and the 2 month tour guide I got from the beginning of Kerrang magazine where they include items that the readers have sent in. When choosing my models for my magazines, I took fashion into account as to who could look the part comfortably as well as looking for people that would be willing to be in it, which happened to be the same person in both of them. I had to take tips from my teachers about how to take the pictures accurately and to make them have the effect that I wanted them too, which was surprisingly easy as I had to darken the picture to give it a more gloomy feel and emphasise the colour a bit more to show flamboyance.

By using Blogger, I found that I was able to see the alterations that I made to my work and was able to witness how my skills had developed from the college magazine task to my final project. I admit that I feel that my final project could have been tweaked further to make it better, but I also feel proud of the work that I have done. My abilities have changed a dramatic amount as I am now able to create much more dynamic pictures in order to appeal to my target audience and attract people that would be interested in my magazines. When evaluating my work, I then understood why we chose to use Blogger as I was able to look over my previous work and create a more accurate depiction of where my skills started at and where they were once I had completed my final project.

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