Cotents Page Mock Up

Due to the fact that im behind on schedule, the quality of my contents page has taken a dip in quality. I kept to the classic Marylebone colour scheme and just tryed to make it clear that it fits into the actual magazine format

Review of Amber's Blog

I believe that Amber's blog is a detailed diary which succesfully notes her progress of her media studies experiance. I believe that Amber's anaylsis of each Media top is in depth and confirms that she has a detailed understanding of the subject and what we have learnt thus far. For example in the Skins advert colouring effect, she replicated her editing on the actual Skins adverts. She also explains how she did this and what format she did the advert on.

I also believe that Amber's contents page for her magazine is particularly good. She uses a colour scheme of 3 which are green, yellow and grey. This makes the contents page clear and also relates to the remainder of the magazine. This shows that Amber has an understanding of the way magazines work.

Although the majority of Amber's activitys on her Media blog are positive, I believe certain aspects of her cover. The colour scheme clashes with the font coulours on the cover. It is not clear what the topics of the cover are.

Preliminary Task For Front Cover Photoshoot

This is a plan for my photoshoot. It describes what I am going to do for my photoshoot, and what I want to achieve from my photos.

Photos for Preliminary Task 07/11/08

In this lesson, I took numerous pictures of several members of my class. I feel as though this task's result was quite successfull. It only took me two shots to capture my cover image for "SME". These are numerous images taken by members of the class.

NME FINAL COVER

This is the final copy of "SME". The cover was done using Adobe Photoshop. An annotation of the cover is under the plan of the cover.

NME Plan

Analysing Education cover plan

In order to create a successful cover it is imperative that all the cover tools are placed in the correct location. For “SME” my Marylebone 6th form dedicated magazine I attempted to create a young fresh look which is similar to that of the music magazine “NME”. It is almost supposed to be a joke relating to the magazine. Because my goal was to attempt to make “SME” resemble “NME” parts of the music magazines cover I copied. For example, I used a font similar to that of the masthead on the “NME” cover. The reason for this was because I thought that the sixth form audience would be attracted to it because of its similarities. The masthead followed the traditional placement that it is placed in on most magazine covers, the top left corner. What I did however was place part of the word behind the model (Danielle Emina). Obviously this made it easier to fit the masthead in, but it also gives the reader the impression that “SME” is a successful company. This attracts the potential reader to the magazine because it is popular.

The scrapline is placed above the masthead for 2 reasons. It is unconventional as generally it is below the masthead. I added this feature to make the magazine seem young and in a way slightly clueless as it does not follow the typical media cover pattern. The other reason was because I did not want it to clash with the main image. The reason it is purple is to disestablish itself from the masthead but to still make it recognizable for the reader. The main focus should be on the SME rather than the scrapline.

The main image spreads across the whole of the cover. This is to give the reader the atmosphere of the school because the image is in the playground. The actual image is of a student at the school (Danielle Emina). It is a medium shot and has connotations that Danielle is happy at the school. The image is also meant to link to the main story in the issue which relates to “learning in style.” In the image, Danielle holds her folder. This shows her link to education. The image was taken during a lesson where we took images of certain students. These were both in the original form and on a white background.

The kicker and explanatory text are in a clear white font so they do not clash with the image. They are in a futuristic font because I thought that this would attract a teenage audience, our target audience. There are 3 kickers and 3 explanatory texts. The kicker’s fonts are larger because they are meant to stand out and attract the audience. The explanatory text is quite literally the explanation of the kicker.

Mock Up of Marlyebone Education Cover

In preperation for our magazine cover, we were instructed to design a mock up of our potential cover. Within the mock up, we arranged our mastheads, kickers and explanatory line in the appopriate places where they would go in our final magazine cover. We did this on publisher using word boxes. Once they were arranged we analysed why we put the boxes in certain positions.

My Education Cover Image 7th November 2008
For our preliminary task, we are to create an education magazine. During this lesson, I took a picture of Danielle Emina, a fellow classmate. My magazine is targeting the sixth formers at St Marylebone. She is a representation of the average student who attends the school. The planning process for the shot involved determining many things. These included my model, the camera height/angle/distance. In this case I used a mid/close up. The picture was located in the playground. For our magazine, we also needed the image with a white background.

My Education Magazine Cover

My education magazine will be created on adobe Photoshop using the majority of the tools on the program. My main goal is changing the stereotypical image that education is boring to teenagers. I will attempt to do this by giving the magazine more of a streetwise look and by employing young adults to be the key orcherstrators of the magazine and with that the cover. My masthead and name of the magazine will be “Education” except in a graphite bold font. The aim of this is to attract teenagers and young adults who generally do not hold an interest in education. It shows that they fit into the education system also. The sub masthead would read “you never knew education could be so fun!” Although the magazine has a street feel to it, it maintains the use of proper and grammatical English throughout.
The colour scheme would be quite vibrant as it is needed to attract the audience of teenagers who are not necessarily interested in the context. These colours include green, red and blue. There is a risk however that the cover could become too complicated and out of control. If the magazine’s target audience were a more intelligent and sophisticated branch of students, there would be a denser selection of colour and a more basic masthead and selection of headlines. The context of the magazine is enough to sell it or make it widely read by an audience whereas a less educated audience would not react in the same manner.

Comparing Education Magazine

Our most recent exercise was to compare two education covers again highlighting the key elements of the covers. These are both positive and negative. Again through this research I was able to take on key components of each magazine and consider installing some into my own.

Analysing Education Magazine

During class we were all assigned to different magazines and told to write a detailed essay focussing on the key features of the magazine cover. These include everything that we have learnt thus far such as, Fonts, denotations, connotations and mise en scene. This was a useful exercise because it informed us of what we needed to consider for our magazine so that it is successful.

Banner and Icon

We constructed a banner and icon using adobe Photoshop which will be used for our media blog. Its appearance could be very independently designed as we were given freedom to be creative and base it on our own personality.
The Banner can go along the top of the blog, the bottom or on the sides. All successful brands have a banner and an icon.

Semiotics

Symbolic- needs to be cultrually learned

Iconic and Indexical- looks what it represents, suggestive of its connections to what it represents Different semiotics hold very different importance, for example symbol is used for branding such as Nike, we have to culturally learn what that tick represents.

Air Brushing

This tool artificially changes the completion of an image. In our task our goal was to make a model with poor skin live up to her supposed perfect tag which models are stereotypically pressured to have. This tool however has come under scrutiny because it shows the perfect person rather than showing a realistic human being. It is most commonly used in adverts and photographs.

Fonts

The use of fonts can enhance an image drastically. The style of font generally has a theme or reason behind it. For example if we were looking for a font to tie into Barrack Obama’s presidential campaign they it may be wise to use a colour scheme of red, white and blue. Obviously this is very pro American and patriotic and will give the audience a sense that Obama is proud to be American.
The most recent thing I have learned is called . In this case with the tool I drew rainbow of sorts to add effect to the picture and make it resemble an upcoming “Skins” episode on E4. Effects like this one add effect to the picture and help it to tell a story and tell us what exactly is going on in the image.

Colour Filtering

Colour filtering filters out all of the irrelevant parts of an image and highlights the ones which are necessary. For example in this image the people are in grey, this could show that ethnicity has no influence at school and that we are all equal.

Cloning images

Cloning before

Cloning After





Cloning is used to remove cooperate branding from a school publication as commercial endorsements should not be published on a school prospectus. As a public sector school, we cannot give the impression that Dior is something that the school if affiliated with. The changes I made were removing the “Dior” logo from the white bag, deleting the “Zara” logo from the blue bag and the woman walking up the stairs. We did this using Adobe Photoshop.

Key Media Language and Introduction to Media

To help aid our understanding of media analysis, as of so far our priority has been using media terminology. This includes terms such as “connotations”. This is the word for when we make observations of an image. “Denotations” are what we just see in an image, it’s a very basic word. “Mise-en-scene” is a word which describes what is in a picture and what camera, lighting shots are being used. We also looked at numerous computer techniques to help improve our quality of work.

Blog Introduction

This blog entry is back dated from previous entries.