Use of Technology

1. Soft Wares

1.1. I used the softwares – Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator to produce my music magazine. It was a gradual learning process, and I started with just basic abilities and built on them as I went along through exploration and experimentation.

1.2. I used Photoshop for my front cover and In Design for contents page and double page spread. Illustrator was used for designing features that required more creativity in, such as – the masthead, price tag, title on DPS, selling line.

1.3. From Illustrator, I learnt how to mess around with text designs, with my masthead; I played around with the shape of the letters. I finally decided to cover the opening to the O completely to give a unique touch as well as give it some shine like a light was be shun on a metallic surface.

2. Colour

2.1. I used a colour wheel from a website called color.adobe.com to look for unique shades for my masthead, and used HEX codes to transfer the exact shade I wanted to Illustrator’s colour tool when I selected ‘IDOL’. I made sure to constantly use a two to three based colour scheme. On the front cover I went for burgundy, gold and black. On the Contents page it was burgundy, black and white and on double page spread it was brown black and peach. I found using three made it stand out more.

3. Layering

3.1. The use of layering was quite helpful, for example, I could use the magic tool to select an area where the masthead was covering the cover star, create a new layer with it and bring it before the masthead so she was on top. I found this look common in a lot of music magazines and it makes my cover stand more.

4. Photography

4.1. I experimented with the use of lighting like I had been taught in the tutorial. The soft boxes and light reflectors were most appealing to me for look I was going for and I found they gave a glow rather than beaming shine. I explored different intensities with the lights turned off, as well as angles. I ensured that the cover star tried different positions too so I had a range of choices, but I kept in mind the modest look I was going for.

4.2. I found the use of professional digital cameras tricky, so I decided to use a simple iPhone 5. I made sure that I allowed the image to focus before I took the photo, for better quality images.

5. Researching + Blog

5.1. My researching skills developed with case study and planning of my magazine, because I had to scan to retrieve relevant information and also finding different ways of looking for same thing to get what I needed, for instance phrasing a term in a different way.

5.2. I also learnt how to export my finished product into a JPEG image and posted it on my blog.