question 7

Question 7:

During the process of making my magazine I have learnt many things. When we first began our journey we were asked to create a college magazine. When we began the construction of our college magazine my skills were very limited, I had just about worked out how to use certain tools in both Photoshop and InDesign. We were also very new to some of the terminologies such as anchorage, denotations, connotations, drop caps etc. My college magazine did not have a dps, just a front cover and contents page. Nearly all of the pictures used in the college magazine were taken on my smart phone and the rest were taken off google (like the college logo). The front cover of the college magazine was created on Photoshop and had a good amount of information to draw the audience’s attention (anchorage) however it lacked in creativity as now when I look back at it, it feels as though much of the information was all over the place. The colour scheme too wasn't very suitable because it was very plain. The contents page was one single page, mostly black and white and has a lot of white space and the images used lacked in a creative flare and professionalism. There was no use of drop caps however there was use of denotations: my main feature was Taylor Mae who claimed a certain event began her life all over again, and this goes well with the front cover which is of her smiling.

Comparing my college magazine to my actual magazine there was massive improvement. It is evident how much my skills in both Photoshop and InDesign developed, for example before on Photoshop I could only insert and edit pictures but when I created my magazine I was using the stroke tools, blur tool, text tool etc. I was also using the terminologies when creating my magazines, for example in my dps I used drop caps at the start of my article to indicate where the actual interview began. I also used denotations and this is through my image to portray a message of strength and courage however the images also allow the reader/audience to make assumptions about it so the images do not place any limitations. I have also used connotations through the use of the colour scheme: black, white and red all colours which fit best the Hip Hop genre as well as the images. The black shows the "darker side of Hip Hop", the red represents "courage and strength" and the white shows how "free" the Hip Hop genre is, it places no limitations. I used a lot more pull quotes on my front cover, contents page and dps and I hadn't done this in my college magazine. I believe I put far more work in my music magazine, the time I spent just editing random pictures on Photoshop in my own time helped a lot and this can be seen through the feedback I received as well as what can be seen from the end product. For my college magazine, the feedback I got from my peers was overall positive: “I really like the whole concept of the contents page. I think the colour scheme and the images really suit your genre (hip hop) very well. I really like how the social network logos are quiet big showing that your magazine is very social in the media. I really like how the main image is in the centre and directly looking towards the audience and obvious where to find the article/DPS.” However they suggested I should improve my work by: “Few things I would improve is to add page 1 on the bottom left side of the contents page, maybe add a website somewhere in the contents page and to also make the @BeatBox relate/similar to the other fonts”. I did take these changes into consideration and implemented them into my magazine. As suggested I made BeatBox similar to the other fonts and changed my page numbers. The audience feedback allowed me to see what worked and what didn’t and having the feedback made me improve my magazine to a great extent. For example, my page numbers on the contents page were very closely linked, however my magazine is a monthly so it was very much starting to look like a weekly. Having had the feedback allowed me to realize that I needed to change this, and due to the audience feedback I thought this through and put this change and others like this in place.