steve's media blog: March 2013

Thursday, 28 March 2013

Question 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GruBjrczxf0&feature=youtu.be

Saturday, 16 March 2013

Question 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuTqB_pCuTY&feature=youtu.be

Masthead – As you can see, on both cover the masthead is large and stands out, the fonts are both quite simple but the Star one is much better and there is clear improvement. The use of colour stars and basic editing such as separating the t makes it a lot more visually appealing.

Cover Lines –The Star cover lines are a lot more attractive than the ones from the preliminary task, the use of boxes, fonts, colours and lines make it more appealing than others which are quite dull and luck lustre.

Cover Image – The cover image is probably the largest improvement between the two covers. The positioning of the subject, the way he is facing and the composition of the photo are all a lot better in the second cover.

Title – The title is extremely different and has improved greatly. In the original, it is dull and boring and lacks colour, but in the developed version on the right the title is bright and bold and appeals to the target audience well.

The layout has dramatically improved with less white space, which is filled with text, colour and images. This makes the layout more appealing and increases the aesthetics of the page. I think the use of images is really effective as oppose to in the prelim task I had only text and small icons on the page.

Friday, 8 March 2013

Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout the process I had to take multiple photo shoots, as the products required a lot of images so I felt I learnt quite a lot about photography within media, but mainly magazines. Through other subjects I feel my photography skills were already quite developed, although I still gained a lot of information about music magazine specific photography. When taking the first shoot for my front cover image I did not know much about the codes and conventions of a photo in the front of a magazine cover which reflected in the quality of the photographs, but after research I felt I had gained quite a knowledge of the exact type of image required and in the second and third shoot’s I had taken many more usable, professional looking images for my cover. Overall I did learn a lot about photography with a music magazine, such as the subject pose and positioning, lighting, where the subject is facing, and also the composition of the photo.

When it came to using software on the computer I think I learnt the most, especially in InDesign as I had never used the programme before, although during the process I selected to use Illustrator often as I already had a good knowledge of the software. This resulted in not using Photoshop as much, although when I had to edit my images I found Photoshop extremely helpful, and throughout the process I developed a lot of skills using the software. When using InDesign I found that I would learn something every five minutes and over a period of time I found myself using the software very comfortably which definitely helped hen making my double page spread.

During the process there were a lot of challenges that had to be overcome to produce all three media products. Firstly I found taking my cover photo quite challenging and I ended up doing 4 separate photo shoots to achieve the perfect cover photo. Originally I used a photo from a shoot in the park as my cover image, although after poor feedback I changed it to suit my demographic more. I then took two more shoots, one of which was outside and the other inside, against a white backdrop but when uploaded to the Mac I encountered a number of problems in Photoshop, such as the quality of the photo and the inability to crop the image using Photoshop. So I found an existing cover with a similar demographic and used the image as inspiration for my own photo.

I encountered several problems when using software to create my products, but I found I overcame them relatively quickly. For example, I had multiple problems when trying to get my cover image into Illustrator, which was the software I was using for my cover as the layering options available in Photoshop were not in Illustrator so I had to create several parts in Photoshop and copy them over at the right time. Another problem of a similar nature I encountered whilst creating my double page spread, as on InDesign the editing software isn’t as good as in Illustrator a had to create different parts on different programmes than afterwards, bring them all together.

During the process I have encountered many different technologies, including; Blogger, Slideshare and Prezi, I have learnt a lot about these and many others throughout creating my media products. Firstly I was shown how to use Blogger, it is an extremely useful technology for storing all my coursework in a form that is easy to go through and read. From using it I learnt a lot, mainly how to use it effectively, but also I learnt that blogging is an effective method of communicating information or work so that it is visible by other people. Another technology I used in this process was Prezi, at first I found it confusing but after a while I found it relatively easy to use. Prezi is another effective method of communicating work or information online so that it is easily reachable by other parties. I found that Prezi can be used to create presentations, mind maps and much more, but it is more aesthetically pleasing than just a normal PowerPoint.