Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Here are two products I created this year, the first product is my psychedelic music magazine cover and the second is my art magazine cover which I have created for the preliminary task. 

Looking at my preliminary task I can say that my Photoshop skills have improved greatly, due to the fact that I can now manipulate and rasterize text on Photoshop. In comparison to my preliminary task, I have learnt how to cut out images accurately, because on my college magazine I have used an original image for the background without changing the image. There a few similarities in the style of the magazine covers, however there are a lot of differences due to developing Photoshop skills. One of the most important lessons I have learnt this year is the conventional features to magazines. I have learnt how to use different technologies such as picmonkey.com, a website where you can manipulate your images, add certain things and change the effect; I have also learnt how to use Photoshop; other technologies such as dafont.com which helped me a lot to choose a font for my own magazine because the fonts on Photoshop are limited. 

Skills I have acquired from Photoshop:

• Rasterizing text in order to make font look psychedelic 
• Using the magic wand correctly to cut out certain areas 
• Removing backgrounds accurately
• Changing the effect of the image
• Editing faces; such as removing spots and evening out the colour 
• Airbrushing 
• Adding additional features to text

I have learnt where you would put conventional features on your magazine correctly by looking at other major music magazines. I have learnt where to place cover lines, a splash, a sky line and etc. For example on  my preliminary task there are too many cover lines and they take away the attention from the main image and don't exactly look neat. On my music magazine front cover the cover lines are down one side of the magazine (the idea I've got from a Shindig issue) that in my opinion looks a lot better in comparison to having cover lines down both sides of the magazine cover. The main two cover lines on my music magazine are in bold and stand out, which is better to have on a magazine. I didn't use a sky line on my preliminary task, but I used one on my music magazine cover, it's very conventional for a magazine of any kind to have a sky line, either at the top or at the bottom of the page. 

What I would have changed if I could on my preliminary task: 

If i got the chance to change my preliminary task to make it better I would focus mainly on the conventional features for a magazine, such as placing a sky line, using the same image but cutting out the background and using a background that would associate with art a bit more. I would also change the cover lines a little bit, make the most important ones stand out and the rest a bit smaller. Understanding Photoshop has greatly improved my music magazine which is why if I did this again I would have done a better job, with being able to access a lot more areas on Photoshop. 

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

To create my final product there were a few technologies I have used: 

• Photoshop
• PicMonkey.com
• Publisher
• Dafont.com
• Myfont.com
• YouTube (to learn how to rasterize text and change the effect of the image to create a psychedelic music magazine. 

Photoshop was the main software I have used this year to create my front cover, double page spread and contents page. Learning how to use Photoshop has been very helpful overall, I have learnt to manipulate text and images to make them look the way I wanted to. 

When editing my images I used Photoshop to remove the background, add an additional effect. I have learnt many useful qualities on how to edit my photographs. All of the images below have been edited on picmonkey.com for additional effect. I have used picmonkey.com to manipulate my photographs. 

How did you attract/ address your audience?

Questionnaire:

1) Do you think my magazine looks appealing to read/ view?

2) What genre do you think my magazine represents?

3) Are you drawn to my magazine like you would be to Shindig or other psychedelic magazines?

4) Does my house style match throughout my magazine? 

5) Do you think the colours of my magazine are suitable for a psychedelic rock magazine? 

6) Do you like the images I have used in my magazine? 

7) By looking at the cover of my magazine, does it look appealing enough to purchase?

8) Do you think the images link in well with my chosen genre?

9) What kind of audience do you think my magazine appeals to the most?

10) Do you think my magazine follows conventional features? 

I have asked three males and three females to fill in the small questionnaire. These are the results I got back from the filled in questionnaires. 

The development of my contents page. Step by step guide

The development of my double page spread. Step by step guide

The development of my music magazine front cover. Step by step guide

Here is where I began, when creating my music magazine cover. I took an image of my main artist and edited it to give it an effect of a painting on PicMonkey.com. Straight after I inserted the same image into Photoshop and started creating my magazine cover. This is my third attempt at creating the main front cover, the last two I created did not meet the criteria of a psychedelic music magazine. I made sure the image is black and white because that way I was able to change the colours of highlights and shadows and could get them as bright as I wanted. This fits in really well with my psychedelic magazine genre. The image under shows that I have made it a lot lighter, using the filter at the top, I adjusted the colours and made it black and white. 

After adjusting the colours to black and white using filter, I inserted a vintage paper background to give it a sort of faded look, which will give the magazine cover a vintage/ old look. 

I have tried using a different image for the front cover, however I realised that this image is not suitable for the front cover, the model looks too pale and fades in with the background. For a psychedelic magazine, the model should be wearing bright clothes and the magazine itself has to be colourful and eye-catching. After trying out a different image, I realised that it's not as good as my previous photograph for the front cover. 

I have decided to use the original image, I intended to use in the first place. This image goes very well with the psychedelic rock genre, and will look a lot neater. I have used a coloured background and mixed it with vintage paper, this will give the magazine a unique sort of look. It will be easier to recognise this music magazine as a psychedelic one because of the old look, because psychedelic rock was mostly popular in the 60's/70's. Psychedelic rock still exists, but it is not as popular as it was back in the late 60's, early 70's. Psychedelic rock reached its peak in 1969, during Woodstock Festival. 

In order to make my magazine psychedelic, just like intended. I have decided to use bright colours on the cover, this is why I chose to use dark blue for the shadows of the image, and bright blue for the highlights of the image. I have tried a lot of different colours, but none of the others looked as good as the chosen colours, it also works perfectly with the masthead at the top which is bright red.

In order to create my masthead, I researched different types of psychedelic fonts to find the one I wanted to use the most, since I couldn't find any suitable fonts on Photoshop for my chosen genre. Finally I found the psychedelic font that caught my eye on dafont.com. I couldn't download the font as it was too expensive, so instead I decided to work with one letter at a time to make the masthead perfect, and because I wanted to fit two 'O's' in one line at the top. I typed in 'G' first and print-screened it, then I pasted the picture into PowerPoint and cropped it down, then I saved the letter as an image and inserted it into Photoshop. Using the magic wand tool in Photoshop, I got rid of the white background and dragged the letter onto my original product, the magazine front cover. Then I changed the size using the transformation tool and changed the colour to bright red as I thought it would be appropriate for this kind of genre, I also added drop shadow effect to the letter. I have done the same thing with every other letter in the masthead, in order to make my magazine unique and different I decided to place the letter 'O' on top of the other letter 'O', this adds an interesting effect to my magazine, making it look desirable and funky. Not only will this make my magazine look different and funky but it will also add a new edge to a psychedelic magazine, and the magazine itself will stand out from all the rest. The magazine will not be simple and boring but the complete opposite. 

To make sure the colours of each letter are the same I chose the colour first, then copied the code of the colour and changed it on all the other letters, to make sure they're accurate and they all match.

Wilf Holloway's album/ vinyl cover

For my media project, I have created a psychedelic rock magazine, on the cover of my magazine is Wilf Holloway, who is posing as an individual artist. On my front cover the main story is Wilf Holloway's new album called 'Sacred Valley'. To show what the album would look like I have created an album cover. I drew a picture on a piece of white paper and took a photograph off it. Then inserted it into Photoshop and coloured it in with various psychedelic bright colours. Then I added the text, first I found the font I liked the most on the internet and due to not being able to download it on a college computer I typed in the correct text and print-screened the page, then I inserted it into Photoshop and using the magic wand tool I got rid of the white background, I dragged the text onto my main layer and by clicking 'ctrl+t' I rasterized the text around the shape of the eye, filling in the gaps. On the cover you can see the name of the main artist, and the name of the new album coming out. To see what the album would look like if it was on iTunes, I inserted the image onto an iTunes page. And you can see here, that if the album was real, it would be sold on iTunes.