Skills Development

Throughout the production of DEMAND magazine I have acquired and built upon many new skills. 

Photography

I have found that getting the right lighting, model, clothing, props and pose are the most crucial part of taking a photograph. If the picture is low quality or out of focus and put onto a magazine it can change to quality entirely. This is why I had multiple photo shoots because the pictures had to be right for the magazine. I also learnt how to use photography equipment such as high quality cameras, tripods, different lenses and a green screen. Its important to use a green screen for removing the background of photographs because it makes the process a lot easier. The photo used for my college magazine if far worse than in the music magazine because it was taken on a mobile phone rather than a camera. Also, the only photo on the college magazine contents page is a screenshot of the cover, which causes the magazine to lack any interesting material.

Photoshop

Photoshop was an extremely important piece of photo editing software that I used throughout the construction of my rock music magazine. It was new to me so learning the basics took some time but I am now fully capable of using many of its features to edit photographs and produce pieces of work. For example the magic wand tool allowed me to select blocks of a certain colour and remove them seamlessly. Also I am able to use the centre tool out align text or shapes in the centre of a certain space. My college magazine has the offer of a free Costa coffee and I could not get it into the middle of the shape in the bottom right corner. 

Layout

The layout of the cover pages has changed massively. The cover lines are much more descriptive and interesting, the masthead is much bolder and more appealing, there is a much better image and everything is easy to read. The masthead is easily visible, on the college magazine some of the letters aren't visible due to the poor positioning of the photograph behind it. this issue was resolved by having a much larger masthead with the image above it.

Fonts

On my preliminary work, all of the fonts are the same. The only things that differ are the size and colour, which leaves a boring look to the product. On the music magazine I used fonts from DaFont.com for the more interesting and eye catching ones. The others are from photoshop because the have an extensive selection to choose from.