Weekly Blog 23rd February 2012

This was the last week of our production and was actually our deadline. If we didn't have our products finished, then we couldn't do what we all had to within our schedule, which was get peer assessment on our work.

Thankfully, I had all of my work finished and was ready to present it to my group and ask for questions. We all had to come up with about 5 questions each for the titles of visual aesthetics, content and improvements. This was easy as we all spoke about this as a class and generally had all of the same questions down.

All we had to do was get into groups and show our products off one by one and ask what our groups thought of it. There wasn't really much else to it, it was just to get feedback and assessment off people who are within your target age group and we could probably relate to your products better than some of your teachers might be able to.

Weekly Blog Thursday 2nd February 2012

In this week of my schedule, I have set myself out to to do my double page photo shoot as well as editing my photos.

This didn't exactly go to plan as I have not yet booked photo shoots for my magazine, but, both of my double page spread shoots are to be conducted outside of the college grounds, meaning that I have to do it within my own time. I have gotten in contact with my other interviewee - Curtis Robinson - and have asked for when we could arrange an interview. We have conversed back and forth a few times but a date and place still hasn't been arranged.

Thankfully, as I mentioned in last weeks blog, I already have the photos for my other double page spread with Kim. Last week I also edited them so that they were ready to just be placed into my magazine when the layouts and everything have been created. Even though last week I said I was going to try and book my photo shoot, I got very busy with work and just forgot to book it. I will definitely get a slot within the next week because it is getting quite important that I do hold my photo shoot for my front cover.


Again, I looked towards what I had scheduled for next week and saw that I wanted to start creating rough layouts with my photos, etc. Even though I couldn't really do this for my front cover and second double page spread, I could do this with the photos that I had for Kim. I got onto Photoshop and created a very rough, initial design, pasted the photos into it where I thought they looked best and then transferred it over to InDesign where I added text boxes onto the layout and pasted some text in just to get a feel of what it would look like and what font that I wanted to be on it. However, this only took me about one and a half lesson to do as I am quite experienced within Photoshop so I was once again left with nothing much to do.

Seeing as I could literally do nothing else, I just continued outstanding work for my blue folder. I have always been quite behind it in and now I am trying my best to get caught up with it as much as I can. Even though time has run out for working on it within lesson, there was genuinely nothing for me to really do so it didn't negatively effect me doing blue folder work within lessons.

Model Call Sheet

The images that are circled are the photos that I chose to use for the front cover of my magazine.

Weekly Blog 16th February 2012

For this week in my schedule I had Masthead creation, Photographic post production and Graphic design processes down.

As this week is the half term week, I wasn't actually in college to do this work, but thankfully I have both Photoshop and InDesign at home so it wasn't a big deal.

On the Tuesday of this holiday I held my interview with Curtis and got some very good content for my article. I also got photos of his band playing a show, which all came out looking great. As I had already created the layout for my double page spread, it was simply a case of  me pasting the photo that I wanted into the layout and then going into InDesign and writing up the interview and pasting that in as well, seeing as I had already chosen on what type of font I wanted. This only took a total of around 2 days, seeing as I had to write up the whole interview and pick and choose bits I wanted. The rest of it, however, was very easy and I got that done quickly.

As all of my layouts and content were done for my magazine, there wasn't anything else I really had to do. Of course, I did have some work left for my blue folder so I tried to finish that off, but as far as the production for my magazine goes, I didn't have to do anything. I just spent the rest of my time doing my blue folder and just enjoying my holiday.

Weekly Blog 9th February 2012

For this week, I had  assembling photographic and illustrative material together to create rough drafts for each page, second draft layout work and create shapes, backgrounds, and other necessary page items which are not photos.

I finally got my photo shoot for the Wednesday lesson of this week, which was great as I really did need to get it done. On the lead up to my photo shoot, I thought that I would actually just go and create the layouts for my front cover and second double page spread. I got back onto Photoshop, and started arranging my sell lines, magazine name and everything else around where I wanted my photo. I took a photo of a model from the internet who would have been in a similar pose to my model and placed her on the front so I had at least a vague idea of what I wanted it to look like, instead of just blinding working away and possibly getting the text far too big or far too small.

I also created the layout for my second double page spread. As it only has one main, large picture on the top of the band, I went and took another photo off Google and pasted in it so I just had an idea of what it was going to look like. The layout itself was very easy to create and took barely any time at all. By the time that my photo shoot had come around on Wednesday, I had both of the layouts completely finished and all I simply had to do was paste the photos into where I decided I wanted them to do.

The photo shoot itself went great. I did have to use my backup model as my original model pulled out at last minute. However, I am not bothered about this as my backup model did a great job and I am pretty sure that she did a better job than my original model would have done in the first place. I took all of the photos for my front cover, seeing as I was doing my photo shoot for my double page spread in the holidays. I took a total of around 30 pictures, and the contact sheet will be on my blog. I got her to do various poses, making everything different so that I had a lot of variety to choose from in case I didn't like my initial ideas. As I said, everything went very well and I was glad to have finally done it.

I only had one lesson left for this week on Thursday before we broke up for the half term. I put my photos straight onto my front cover and it looked great, I was genuinely really happy with how it had turned out. My model fit on the front cover perfectly and the size was right and everything. The only thing I tweaked about the front cover was that I took a colour sample from my model's shirt and used it as the sell lines, making my whole magazine just look generally a lot more tied together.

I am very happy with the progress I have made this week and to see I am so close to finishing. All I have to do now is to finish my blue folder and then get my interview and photos done for my second double page spread, which I  have arranged with Curtis for within the half term.

Outdoor Risk Assessment

Model Release Form

Full Name:

Address:

Telephone Number:

Shoot Location: Arts Centre, Darlington

Date: Wednesday 8^th January, 2012.

I hereby give Margaret Newlands , the irrevocable and unrestricted right to use and publish video footage or photographs of me that are taken on the above date. These may be used for educational purposes (that may include publishing to a public video forum, such as Youtube or a blog), film production or advertising.

Print Name:

Signature: