EVALUATION OF COLLEGE MAGAZINE

Preliminary Priestley magazine evaluation

Logistics:

I planned the production of the magazine by firstly making up a name. Names that I toyed around with are (…). I chose ragasine because it seemed memorable and was the most original name there (some of them like ‘fresh meat’ were other peoples ideas). With the name sorted out I drew up a rough draft of the front cover. It had the outline of a person (in medium close-up shot) with the features and incentives surrounding it.

It was very vague but it reminded me of the task. I didn’t plan very much for the features or incentives of the magazine, and kind of made them up as I was creating it.

Technology:

I used Adobe Photoshop CS5 extended and most of the tools it features. To create the masthead I used the rectangle tool and the text tool. I had to change the font of the text to better replicate the magazine. To create the puff underneath it I used the custom shape tool. The background is a medium close up of one of my classmates as asked and it was taken by me. There is another feature on the page but it’s just in a plain black box to make the puff stand out more and keep variation. At the bottom there’s a small Ariel picture of the college to advertise the fact there’s a free map inside. Its been cropped so you only see inside the boundaries of the campus. I did this by cutting around the area with the polygonal lasso tool and then selecting ‘invert’ so that when I pressed delete the area that wasn’t highlighted got removed.

The last thing I did on it was add a lighting effect at just under the magazine title, so it looks like there’s a sun is shining on everything.

Reflection

If I was to do this task again, I would’ve spent more time getting a better photo to work with. If I did that, I probably could’ve made a better job of the features because I could plan ahead. I think most of the stuff I did worked but I should have done more because the bottom of the page look a bit empty. I’m most proud of the top of the page because it really resembled the covers I was using for inspiration. After doing this I’ve learnt a lot about the basic tools you use in Photoshop and I’m ready to learn more now.