Skills Development

These two pictures are my first attempt at creating a college magazine, and my music magazine final product.

My college magazine was created when I had minimal editing skills, therefore it looks extremely basic and amateur. The cover photo is blurry and was taken in very bad lighting, as I used a basic digital camera and the models were shot in a natural environment, therefore the lighting was not positioned or aimed at any particular areas. No proper consideration was taken regarding equipment, location, lighting and costume, therefore the picture is low quality, blurry and badly shot, and no image editing was made. 

I used only one font throughout the entire cover, making it look boring and plain, and the coverline texts are only positioned in the bottom left corner of the magazine, leaving a lot of space and making the cover look odd and not in proportion. There are also not enough coverlines. 

After creating the college magazine my editing skills improved considerably, as demonstrated when creating my music magazine. 

My cover photo was shot in a studio with a professional photography camera, resulting in a much sharper, clearer shot of the model. Studio lighting was also used, therefore I could aim the lights wherever I wanted, to emphasise different parts of the shot and give an overall professional look to the picture. A lot of thought and consideration went into the costume, background and props that I used in the shot. I chose for these elements to all be black so as not to retract the attention away from the models face and keep her as the main focal point. The positioning of the model was also considered, and I chose to shoot her in an artsy, professional looking way, to add to the sophistication of my magazine. I kept the magazine quite minimalist, by creating a colour scheme (a convention often used by magazines to enforce a brand identity) of red, white and black, and by using a selection of only four fonts (as is the maximum amount conventionally used by popular magazines) so as not to make it appear too cluttered and busy. My magazine is aimed at a serious music listener, therefore the primary reason for them buying the magazine would be to read about music, so I tried to keep everything basic and to the point. As my college magazine contained very little text, I added quite a few coverlines and dispersed them equally over the front cover. I followed popular conventions and kept most of the text to the left side, as this is usually the part of the magazine that is visible to the consumer when placed on a shelf to be sold. 

I believe that my music magazine contains enough text without looking amateur and cluttered, and strikes the right balance of minimalistic without looking completely bare.