Skill Development Essay

A2 Media Studies

Skill Development

Evaluation Essay

For my Foundation Portfolio for AS Media Studies, I had to use DTP and an image manipulation program to produce the front page, contents and a double page spread of a new music magazine. The magazine had to feature a photograph for the cover artist, as well as four other photographs. All images and texts used had to be original and produced by myself entirely. In addition to this, we had to create our very own Blogger account and blog, for which we used to post updates on our progress. This included all draft work, as well as the final work.

During my AS course for Foundation Media Studies, I learnt about the many forms of digital technology. I learnt to use Adobe Photoshop efficiently enough to be able to express my ideas thoroughly. Luckily for me, I was already familiar with the ways in which Photoshop works, therefore, this gave me a huge advantage when it come to the digital editing. For example, I was able to create the exact look for the front cover without encountering any problems whatsoever. I had to make sure that my title piece was not too over powering that it takes away from the photo, additionally, to prevent this I edited the colours of the photo to be a bit more vibrant, especially the eyes of the model as they are the most important part to engage with the audience and my skills thoroughly helped with this. Other uses of photoshop was that I edited the colour levels of my photographs to make them appear more vibrant and vivid and therefore more aesthetically pleasing. It also draws in more focus to the cover star's eyes, this helps the reader feel more connected with the star and therefore feel as though it's more personal.

I was also familiar with a lot of the key concepts of a magazine cover, for I have studied this in previous years as well as being a magazine consumer myself; this greatly helped with actually thinking of the concept of the magazine. For example, a pulled quote is a very common convention in magazine interviews, these quotes are normally catchy or mysterious to make the reader want to read the article. I also used this pull quote technique and placed it on the left side of the DPS, this is because a reader would naturally read from left to right, therefore they would read this quote first and hopefully become intrigued and want to read the full interview. I also inserted a drop cap at the start of the article, which again is a very commonly used feature in magazines. This shows that it;s the start of the article and also helps give it a professional and formal feel to it.

Also, learning a deeper understanding of connotation and denotation helped when coming to a creation. I used my previous knowledge of the program to create banners and add shadows to objects and text. Additionally, with the use of gaussian and motion blur I managed to make items on my cover seem fast paced and current. Adding an outer glow to my title to give it a neon style effect. This helped it fit the genre of synth as people generally relate synth to night clubs and disco lights.

Throughout the course, my IT skills were improved greatly as I continued to learn how to create online projects such as Blogger and Prezi. With the use of Prezi, it helped me realise how an artistic point can be put across to an audience though the use of digital images and animations, rather than just a plain text on the screen. I also realised that user interaction helps someone actually pay attention to your work.

Since starting the Foundation Portfolio of creating a music magazine, I have greatly improved on my knowledge of the use of major conventions within a magazine. Additionally, with this knowledge and from what I previously know of photoshop, I feel, I have managed to create a realistic feeling magazine to a high standard. Even small things such as the sizing and spacing between texts can make the cover look more professional, we can see this when comparing the size and spacing of the articles on my college magazine and my music magazine. Overall, I feel the skills I already possessed really helped as a foundation for the future skills that I began to learn throughout the course.