We have started a new assignment which is a magazine one. We are learning about reading a brief and doing excrcises about why briefs are important because of the guidelines and instructions they have.
Friday March 4th 2011:
Today I started to write my production schedule. Then in Simon's lesson, I took notes about raster and vector facts. After that, I had to write about identifying the differences and highlight the advantages and limitations of each format.
Tuesday March 8th 2011:
Today, I finished my production schedule I had to do to see what I will need to do for the next 4 weeks. I will need to keep track of the things that I must do for this. After doing that. I started to do my questionnaire for my primary research. So far, I have asked 15 people and I will need to ask 5 more as I need to ask 20 people to complete my questionnaire. I am also spending today coming up with some initial ideas, brainstorms and sketches etc. for my final product.
Wednesday March 9th 2011:
Today, I have been continuing what I was doing yesterday. I wrote about all of the feedback I received from yesterday's questionnaires. I listed all the magazines they read, how many people I asked, how many were boy or girl, how old they all were, their favourite magazine genre's and listed what they would all like to see in a magazine made for students aged 16 to 20. Getting these results has made me think about what content I should have in my magazine.
For homework, I shall find some magazines at home that I can use to cut out images that I can use for my moodboard. I will bring them into College on Friday.
Friday March 11th 2011:
Today I started my mood board and got my images from the internet instead, the images were about what kind of content I may put in my magazine. Including info on public transport, local cinema films & times, images of the college, other student magazines etc.
In Simon's lesson, I learned about typography and more about magazine layouts like the heading, sub-heading, columns, gutters, folios, grids. The typography of Sans Serif and Sans, whether headings are traditional or modern. I experimented with text in Adobe Illustrator and I have now saved that as a PSD, exported it into Adobe Photoshop CS2 and now I can print it out.
Tuesday March 15th 2011:
Today, I started to make my presentation to pitch the idea by this Friday. I made a lot of notes for what I will do to plan putting this all together. I came up with a few unique ideas to make my magazine idea my USP (Unique Selling Point). One was to use QR code reader and have a "Story of the month" column and a "Video of the month" column where people can submit funny stories or videos. I am now half way through making this presentation, I'm currently not sure yet whether I may have cue cards or not. The last presentation I did was in October where I had to pitch my idea for my DVD menu, I used cue cards in that to remember what I can talk about in the presentation. They were useful but I may have managed without them, just look at the board and say my points but not stare at the board too much as I pitch my idea.
Wednesday March 16th 2011:
Today, I am picking up where I left off yesterday which was to finish making the presentation. A minor issue I had with making the presentation was that I wasn't very good with making the graphs that I wanted to make to show the results of the questionnaire that I made and asked people. However, I got through it and I am now able to present the pages with the graphs on Friday. In the afternoon, I also came up with a name for my magazine. I'm naming it "Students R Us" and I had "Toys R Us" in mind when I came up with it. LOL. I'm calling it "Students 'R' Us" because it is a magazine made by students for students. I've now finished the presentation and I shall spend the last half an hour of this lesson and all day tomorrow practicing presenting it. I'm still not using cue cards just yet but if I feel that I do need to use some cue cards after practicing on Thursday, I will make some.
Friday March 18th 2011:
Today is the deadline for pitching the idea. (Plays EastEnders theme tune) haha nahh it was ok, I had finished my presentation on Wednesday and spent most of yesterday (Thursday) practicing it. I was prepared to do it but only because I had finished doing it. I was nervous to pitch it to everyone on my course. Everyone was pitching their ideas to both the groups on this course, not just our course. I just kept reminding myself that everyone probably feels worse than me, if not, worse. Although when people did their presentations before me, I asked to be excused from the class for a few minutes. I went into E21 just to go through the presentation a few more times. Then I went back into the lecture theatre and presented my PowerPoint presentation. I felt more confident than I did when I did my DVD menu pitch last October.
I feel now that I can perform presentations better and that I should always go through the presentation again once or twice before I need to pitch it on the day I am pitching the presentation. Such as when I wake up in the morning of the presentation, go through it at home before I get to college.
Tuesday 22nd March 2011:
Today, I started off trying to make a front cover for my Student magazine, Students R' Us. I started off doing it as a draft or a rough idea of my final product then develop this rough cover into my final product. But at the start of the lesson, Andy showed us 2 examples of magazine front covers, a Kerrang one featuring Green Day on the front cover and a "Heat" magazine. Andy noted to us how many layers they had, which were over 20. So today I learned that magazines have a lot of layers. he also mentioned that it was important to have small text'/images on the left because we read a book (or a magazine) from left to right. When I started to make my front cover, I chose to print out 2 magazine covers first, we didn't need to do this but I did it because I believed that it would help me with starting my front cover. I printed off 2 magazine covers and annotated them with how many layers there were, the colours and how all the text, images & colours go well together. For example, I annotated a Kerrang magazine (the same one Andy showed us), the sub-heading was "GREEN DAY" and that was the same font & colour as the title; Kerrang. Plus, there was a banner at the very top of the front cover with white & yellow text, which matched the colours of the image border on the right side of the page and some text on the left side of the page. I also noted how there can be something like a Black box with green text in it and on another part of the page, there can be a green box with black text in it, making it match, hence why I noted it all blends in well together. This did help me a lot as for what colours I could use, where to use them, where I can place images and banners etc.
So far, my main feature that is going to be in my magazine is my friends, Tom Batten and James Thornton. Tom and James are 2 of my friends who are in a band together called "The Mannimals" because they do "First Diploma in Music" at this College. Tom plays lead guitar and James plays Keyboard. I've known Tom since primary school when we were 9 and I met James last September because we are in the same English class. A while later, I realised my new English classmate, James, was in Tom's band. On the last Wednesday at the end of every half term, they perform a gig either in Recital Hall in the music block in Chi College or in The Union in College. I plan to interview Tom and James and have Tom on the front cover of the magazine. I asked Andy for permission to log into my Facebook during class because I needed to get a few images that I had taken which I wanted to use for my magazine. I used an image I took of Tom with his guitar months ago but it still counts as original photography. Now I'm just editing/removing the background and putting some text and a banner in it.
(Fun fact, Tom Batten did the same course as me last year which was First Diploma in Media, although he didn't enjoy it and did music this year)
Wednesday March 23rd 2011:
Today, I am once again continuing with what I did yesterday. Making my magazine front cover. I have so far got Tom on the front cover using one of my own original photos I took. I made the font "Eras Bold ITC". I had the annotations I did yesterday of the magazine covers I looked at to help me place images, text and ideas of what colours to use. I added an image of the Subway that is coming soon to Chi College, I put it on the left side of the page - like Andy said - it's more important for it to be on the left than it is on the right. That's where I'll put the rest. I added a small box below the Subway advertisement which said "UFO in Chi? - Check out the "Video of the month" and see what you think!". I mentioned in my pitch that I would have a "Video of the Month" section where readers can submit a video online and this was a video by my friend, Ollie Saunders who saw a UFO one night at 10pm in Chichester. He recorded it with his phone.
The magazine front covers helped me with putting a sub-heading, I put "Chi College Union Gig!" below the magazine title in front of the image of Tom, I used the same colour and font as the magazine title, just like the magazines I annotated. It also gave me the idea to put a banner going across the bottom saying other stuff. I put "Also: Story of the month - The Pizza Banana Incident, Are David Cameron and Nick Clegg having a secret affair?". Like I said before in my pitch, I had the idea to have a "story of the month" like the "Video of the month" section. (Fun fact, this "Pizza Banana Incident" story happened in my English class, James Thornton was there when it happened.) The magazines I looked at also helped me with ideas of writing a quote on the front of the magazine, I wrote a quote "'You must come & see this gig' - Tom Batten, Lead Guitarist of 'The Mannimals' on First Diploma in Music". At the moment, I am almost finished with my front cover but I need to make some final decisions on the colours I will use and put a little more content on the front page. I have English class tomorrow and James Thornton is in my English class so when I see him I will ask James some questions tomorrow, I will just write the questions and answers down with my note-taking material. I'll ask questions such as "Are you enjoying your course?", "were you nervous for your previous gigs?" or "How long have you been playing Guitar/Keyboard". As I also live near Tom, I will go to his house and interview him.
Friday March 25th 2011:
Yesterday, I asked James some questions, although I have more to ask and I will ask him the next time I see him, I asked him 9 questions and I will ask Tom the same questions when I next see him. I did go and knock for Tom yesterday but he wasn't in because he had gone to Brighton for the weekend and will not be back until late Sunday so I'll try and catch him on Monday. Meanwhile, yesterday I came up with the idea of featuring the DeLorean on my front cover. Over a year ago, I was in Pagham and there was a replica of the time machine from Back To The Future - which is a DeLorean. I planned to feature it as it was so iconic and it would be appealing to sci-fi fans and classic film fans.
I feel that my front cover is now ALMOST finished, but I'm still adjusting images, text, and colours so they are all in the perfect place. I added a "Find us on Facebook" logo because I said in my pitch that I'd make a Facebook fan page for it where people can submit or view the "Video of the month" or other general stuff. Plus, I asked James Thornton yesterday if he or Tom can send videos of their performances on the "fan page". I also added loads of tiny stars, put them in a circle and put text inside it saying "'Best magazine in West Sussex'- Chichester Observer". I also put a barcode on the bottom right and wrote "Issue 1 - April 2011" and another small text box which said "Read our exclusive interview with Tom Batten (pictured) Lead Guitarist and James Thornton keyboard player of The Mannimalls!". I made some boxes of text black with orange text or orange with black text to make it all blend in like I said the other day.
Tuesday March 29th 2011:
For homework I did over the weekend, I got to answer my questions, I additionally came up with some more questions that I could put in my double-page spread. After asking Tom those questions, I contacted James and asked the same questions I had not asked him yet. Now I have all these answers written down in my note taking material, I can write it in my double page spread. I got some inspiration to do my interview page from a magazine article that I'm looking at in my GCSE English class (I'm retaking it). I noted how all the questions were in bold and italic and the colour of that text was the same as the heading, sub-heading and even the same colour as the background wall in the photo. This inspired me dramatically with doing my interview page.
I did something very similar to this, had my questions red, bold and italic and for the answers, as it was an interview with two people, I would put
"How long have you been playing guitar/keyboard:" then I'd put;
Tom: 3 years
James: 10 years
So when I put the answers, I put Tom's and James' names in bold to make it stand out to the rest of the question and make both answers stand out to each other. After doing that, I used an image which I took last October of The Mannimals' gig. I put it in the bottom right corner like in this Jamie Burdekin article and I put a little red box at the top of it and put in black text that said "L - R: [as in from left to right] Sam Watkins, Jak Goddard, James Thornton, Reg Greetham and Tom Batten)"
After doing all that, I started to do the left side of my double-page spread. Last year when I did First Diploma in Media, I had to write a review for a video game, I did a review on the Xbox 360 game, Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing. This got me a distinction and it was the main reason why I got a distinction on that entire unit. I'm going to put this game review in my magazine, although I deleted it from my computer but I still have a hard copy of it so for homework I am going to type it up all over again in Microsoft Word. But for the rest of the day, I did the rest of the layout for the left side of the page, like putting text banners & boxes in it and an image. I edited an image of Sonic The Hedgehog to make an image of him holding the video game I'm reviewing.
Wednesday March 30th 2011:
Last night, I spent an hour or 2 typing up the Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing video game review I wrote this time last year. I did edit some of the stuff as I typed it up to make it suitable for a magazine. I copied and pasted it into some text boxes in Photoshop, although I felt that it looked too boring as there was too much text, let alone the text was too small. So I cut out two of the most unimportant paragraphs in my video game review. I also added an image of the SEGA characters into the magazine. I edited the background too by making it red on the left side. I used the rubber to make it large and make a huge white circle on the top right of the left side of the page which is where Sonic is to make it look a little more interesting. I added an image of the Xbox 360 controller by the heading to remind the readers this game is being reviewed from a certain platform, which is Xbox 360. I also added a star shape and wrote "10/10" in big letters in the star, I made the star blue, the same colour as Sonic The Hedgehog to make it all blend in. Lastly, I added two quotes from the review underneath the heading. "This game truly gives you hours of fun!" and "Compared to other similar games...this game has to be the best!"
Tuesday April 5th 2011:
Today I got very far in doing my contents page. I also came up with the idea of having this magazine released on a Monday every month, hence why I put a banner at the top that said "We all know Monday's can be a drag. Luckily, Monday's are when a new 'Students R' Us' issue is out! Yay!" so if this hyperthetically was a real magazine, it would give readers something to look forward to on Mondays. When I got the idea of editing an image of Sonic The Hedgehog holding the Sonic video game on the double page spread, I thought of doing the same for the contents page except he holds my magazine (The front cover). I had the Sonic image overlapping the subway image too. I also photocopied a few other contents pages from real magazines to help me make one, I got the idea of having a copy of the double page spread in the contents page with text overlapping it that said "Cover story" which was similar to the contents pages I looked at. I also made the background white/orange to match some text colours and make it all blend in.
Wednesday April 6th 2011:
Today I continued with what I did yesterday. I had to write up list of contents on the bottom left side of the page. I put things like "Is David Cameron having an affair with Nick Clegg? See PAGES 6 & 7". I put all the "See PAGE __" in orange and the other text in red or black. Making all the text stand out to each other and to blend in with the rest of the magazine. I then came up with the idea of putting Big bold black lines between all the text to break it up/seperate it all making it easier for the readers to see what page to go to for certain info. I have now finished the contents page and the double page spread and the front cover, now I need to do any perwork that is incomplete, chenck through my work and do my evaluation.
Friday April 8th 2011:
Today is the day where we are submitting all of our work, I've spent the morning printing out everything and putting it all into my folder. Now I am doing my evaluation to conclude everything and...well....that's all I gotta say really.
