To begin creating a college magazine, I first had to plan. The first thing I decided to do was make a list of features that are included on a magazine front cover such as: Masthead, Incentives, Images, Barcodes etc. I did this to become familiar with the terminology and in doing so knew which features to include on my own design. I then moved on to writing down ideas for names of the college magazine. I came up with a number of ideas such as “The Priestley Times”, a pun of “The Times”, and “College101”, but in the end I chose to go with “The Priestley Press”. In addition, I then created a list of features to include in the magazine. After I decided of the name, I then created a sketch of my cover and contents of my intended design.
In order to create my magazine, I needed to use technology. I used the software ‘adobe Photoshop’ to create this. I used a myriad of different tools in order to gain the look of the magazine I was going for. I also used a large number of effects and techniques to make the magazine seem like an item you would see on the shelf of a retailer. One significant tool I used to make this mainstream look possible was the use of the magic wand tool. This is used to get rid of any unwanted image, and in my case, I deleted the background on the medium close up image and in doing so, the cover star was the only part of the image present. Due to this, the background was a plain white one. However, there were still small parts on the cover star that still held small parts of the background present so to do this you have to either use the eraser or the polygonal lasso tool to get a closer look and get rid of the parts you don’t want. Although, the plain white background then gave the cover a ‘cold’ and ‘empty’ feel. In order to avoid this, I used the blur tool to produce a more ‘fuller’ and ‘warmer’ look. In addition to this, it also created a professional look to the image.
Moreover, I used layers to create the effect that other magazines hold. These layers helped to make designing the magazine easier. I used three smaller images as tasters as to what the magazine features inside. With these images, I also did a stroke on them, which means on the edges, a colour of your choice appears. This can be made into any size. This can also be done with text, to make it stand out more. Another technique I used via Photoshop’s tools was a spot healer brush to fit in with the ‘photoshopped’ look of models.
If I were to produce another college magazine, I would take more time in cropping the image as it had quite a ‘sharp’ look. I would also aim to try and change the hue, saturation etc. of the image as it looked quite bland. Also, the colour scheme of blue and purple could be altered to either red or green to fit in with the mainstream look. Furthermore, I would make my contents page much more ‘full’ as it looks fairly spacious. However, I still feel that the colour scheme worked fairly well for the college, as it has a blue colour scheme in its corridors. I also feel my images looked highly professional and worked very well. My layering also worked. I think that I have developed a high amount within the software Photoshop and have come a long way with how I was with it prior to this task. I think I am fairly confident and knowledgeable with most of the tools, effects and techniques.
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