Photoshop Skills Development 2

This is my film poster which I have designed to harness and improve my Photoshop skills in preparation for the magazine which I have proposed to create. The film which I was creating the poster advertisement for was 'The Simpsons Movie'. Criteria which was required to be included on the poster was: an image of Homer Simpson, 'The Simpsons Movie' title, and a theatrical release date (which, in this case, was July 27th 2007). The first thing I decided to do was create the text 'The Simpsons' in the traditional trademark Simpsons font. I made the entire background yellow, which coincided with the existing black text. yellow and black being a traditional Simpsons colour scheme. I created the word 'movie' in a large font with the font style 'Impact'. I left the text the same colour as the background, adding only a black stroke effect to the text to cause it to stand out. I placed the 'Movie' layer behind the 'The Simpsons' layer of text. I proceeded to copy the 'movie' layer and shrink it to a smaller size, replacing the text with 'July 27th 2007', the release date. I found two image which I would like to use in my poster, an image of the vast majority of the Simpson's cast and an image of Homer Simpson, the show's main character with his mouth wide open. I positioned the release date by rotating and shrinking, and carefully positioned it in such a way that it created the appearance that he was eating the text. I used the Magic Wand tool to cut out the white parts of the image of all of the characters, so that when placed just in front of the background layer, the yellow background could still partially be seen.

I used the gradient tool to create a black-transparent gradient on the lower half of the poster, as the image of the characters ended suddenly. This gradient gives the impression that the characters are endless. I got two images to place in the remaining black space at the bottom of the poster.  One is of a doughnut and one is of a can of Duff beer, both of which have key connotations with the show. I positioned the doughnut layer above the layer of the release date to imply the doughnut has been left over and placed on a flat surface of some sort. I duplicated the image of a Duff beer can twice, once to place in front of the original image, and one which I can rotate and use the warp tool on to give the appearance of the can being crushed and merely thrown to the ground. The final thing I did was use the 'select' and 'gradient' tool on the south-east section of the image. The gradient was a beige-transparent gradient which I inserted to give the impression that beer was leaking from the aforementioned crushed beer can.

Overall, I am fairly happy with my image. The only criticisms which I can see are the facts that the large image of the show's characters in the background is fairly pixelated, and may be quite off-putting. The only other things I can see are located on the Homer Simpson image. His shirt is very jagged and cuts off suddenly at the bottom, and the outline of his eyeballs and his trademark two strands of hair have both been cut out during the removal of the white background via the magic wand tool.

Photoshop Skills Development 1

Here is an example image of Jarvis Cocker which I will edit and manipulate using some of Adobe Photoshop's basic editing techniques and create a very simple magazine cover using some of these features. In the image, I will insert a masthead behind the Jarvis Cocker image, as well as inserting sell lines and a barcode image somewhere on the image.

Here is a design which I have created using Adobe Photoshop. In this activity, I have taken advantage of some basic yet effective Photoshop skills. For example, I have used the effect of placing the masthead behind the subject of the main image. To do this, I first created a copy of the layer with the image on. I placed the copy layer behind the original and deleted the entire image from that layer. I was then left with a layer of Jarvis Cocker's image and a blank layer underneath that. On the main image, I changed the hue/saturation of Jarvis Cocker to make him appear brighter and less dull overall. I also used the Magic Wand Tool to remove the bright pink background from the image, changing the tolerance so that the tool would select the majority of the pink colouring. Once the pink background was removed, I selected the empty layer and inserted a white-to-blue radial gradient effect, which replaced the previous pink background. Now, I decided to add the masthead behind Jarvis Cocker's head. I created a new layer between the background layer and the main image and inserted a text box. In the text box, I typed the name of the example magazine, 'Soundcheck'. I rotated the text to allow it to stand out, and changed the font and font size to increase the effectiveness of the masthead. I positioned the masthead so that the text was behind Jarvis Cocker's head. Since the text was behind the main image, yet in front of the background layer, the 'K' is cut off, however not enough so that the reader cannot understand what the overall word is. Next, I decided to add a main sell line and a couple of sell lines to the magazine. I used the same font as the masthead, but changed the colour to correspond with the dark background of Cocker's clothes. I also added a stroke effects to the two smaller sell lines so that the white text contrasted a little bit with the light blue background. Finally, I inserted a barcode by opening the image in another Photoshop document, and selecting the entire image and copying it. I then went back into my Photoshop activity and pasted the barcode into the document. Scaling the image down, I relocated the barcode to the lower-right hand side of the page, a location where barcodes are typically found. I saved my image as a .PNG to avoid quality loss, and also saved it as a .PSD so I could revisit the document at a later date and edit it should I wish.

Previous Student's Work Evaluation

I analysed existing music magazines created by students, picking out their key strengths and also areas for improvement which I can then take into consideration when creating my own magazine.

Name of product	What I thought were the strengths	What I thought were the weaknesses
Noisette	The main image on cover is located on top of the masthead, a feature found in many popular magazines where displaying the masthead is not required due to the well-known nature of the magazine. There is a clear colour scheme of black and red. As seen during research, these two colours go together very well, and are used in almost all successful music publications. The two colours are particularly powerful and stand out from many other elements of the magazine. As for the fonts, the fonts are interesting and stand out when compared to other traditional fonts such as Times New Roman or Arial. The contents page followed the traditional conventions of a typical music magazine, with the layout including a main/prominent image, smaller images with captions and a list of each article’s contents, all of which are typical features of a music magazine.	On the cover, there is red text on a green background. The two colours do not work well together, and the red text is difficult to read against the green background. The green background section also disrupts the colour scheme of red, black and white, which is also present throughout the rest of the magazine. Text during the article changes size and width. This could possible be due to space constraints, but is a noticeable change which looks slightly unprofessional. Finally, in the magazine, there is lots of white space, especially on the contents page. Background images or colours could be implemented behind the contents page to cause the whole thing to look slightly more professional and give the whole page slightly more of a powerful look. The lack of colour on this contents page is the only factor that lets it down. In the main article, there is still white space, however the article text is spaced out well enough to ensure that the white space is not prominent.
Stage	There is a prominent masthead located on the top of the page. Sell lines are also located on various locations across the entire page. During the article, which is an interview, the layout of the magazine is set out like a traditional interview style. There are two separate colours of font, which changes depending on who is speaking. There is also a pull quote on the page, which is taken directly from the article, a feature that helps to break apart the text and help the reader to break down the article text into manageable chunks. Drop caps has also been used, albeit on the strapline rather than the traditional article text. This is a good feature to use as it allows the reader to clearly see where the article starts. There is a clear colour scheme on the contents page and the main cover of blue and white.	3/4 of the images used are of particularly off-putting quality. The main image on the cover, which should attract the reader’s attention, is heavily pixelated. There are varying fonts and font sizes that cause the magazine to look unprofessional, especially on the main cover in the case of the sell lines. The fact that there are two instances where the sell line font is not in a particularly interesting font would detract the reader’s attention. The contents page in particular is bland and uninteresting, mainly due to the pure blue background rather than an image as the background or even just the colour white, with shapes or tables incorporated to cause the contents themselves to stand out amongst the plain blue background. The previous colour scheme of blue, black and white is not present in the article, and it changes to a black, red and white colour scheme, which causes it to look unprofessional.
Region N.E	The masthead/magazine logo is very well designed, and almost looks like a professional magazine logo. The presence of the red stars runs throughout the entire magazine. The contents page layout is very professional and follows the conventions of other magazine content pages. For example, there is a list of the magazine articles located on the right-hand side of the page, and there are pictures and page numbers underneath each image, with one-word descriptions accompanying this one. This format gives a slight indication to the reader about the contents of the article, but also does not give enough so that they will be inclined to go ahead and read the article itself. The article is a very well presented article with many key conventions being included, such as a pull quote; drop cap and a main image on the right-hand side page.	The image has been tampered with to achieve an effect of a transparent background. In doing so, not all of the background has been removed, leaving large sections of what appears to be a wall still present in the image. Even if the background had been removed successfully, there is no image or colour behind the main image anyway, which may have subtracted a small amount of attention away from the pixelated background of the main image. There is also an abundance of white space throughout the magazine, which is very unprofessional, especially considering the background is white anyway, which further emphasises the lack of content. The sell line font is also very generic and does not stand out well in comparison to other text on the page. Lack of proper punctuation and spelling (“yea”) is also very off-putting.
I.D	Clear colour scheme of black and orange is present throughout the magazine. Very little blank space present. Font style is consistent and remains similar throughout the entire magazine. Contents page preview images and page numbers reminiscent of professional content pages. For the main cover, the orange and black colour scheme work well together yet creates an overall effectively coloured image, and neither the black nor the orange overpower each other. Images are full size on the page, similar to those in professional magazines. Capital/bold fonts are relatively small so that they are not too large and overpowering, yet still have an impact on the reader. The ‘I.D’ masthead on the front cover is placed behind the subject of the main image, just like many traditional music magazines.	The image quality is slightly poor, and not in a great quality for the magazine. The article page has no black on it, making the orange appear very off-putting and a bit of an eyesore. The contents page does not feature any orange, which causes the black to be a very dismal and bland colour without anything brighter to cause it to stand out.
Revive	Main image is placed behind masthead, like many professional magazines. Main cover sell lines also give small details about the article stories without giving too much away so that the reader is still inclined to purchase the magazine. Contents page images feature numbers which signify the page number which hosts the article about the specific subject. The colour scheme is consistent throughout the magazine, with the lilac/purple/pink/grey colour scheme being clearly present throughout the entire magazine. The interview layout is styled as if it were a professional interview. The spelling and overall article layout is reminiscent of a professional magazine, having key features from an article such as a headline, strap line, pull quote and a main image too.	The fonts are rather varied in relation to the sell lines and the font is not constant across the sell line descriptions either, which is rather off-putting. Capitalisation varies, with two sell lines being in various capitalisation ('THE BRITS Gossip', and 'tOP 10'). As for the contents page, the subject's image has been repeated three times, with one instance of the image sufficing the content page. In at least two instances, the subject's image has either been cropped or initially photographed in such a way that the her head has been omitted from the image, giving a slightly unprofessional look to an otherwise well-designed magazine. The font style used throughout the magazine is generally an overall unprofessional font to use for professional magazines. Simple fonts like Times New Roman or Arial will suffice, and fancy, irregular fonts generally look poor and unprofessional.

How I will use this new knowledge to help me create my own product: I will ensure that images I use in my magazine are of a high-standard and are cropped well, leaving no sudden or jagged edges on the image at all. I will also keep in mind that an equal colour balance must be achieved throughout the magazine, as was in the case of the I.D magazine, the contents page did not have any orange present, and the article page did not have any black present, whereas if both pages featured a mixture of black and orange, the colour balance would have been achieved. Despite being minor flaws, proper spelling and punctuation are basic essentials to ensure a magazine looks as professional as it can be. It is difficult to take a magazine seriously when there are frequent spelling or punctuation errors. Finally, white space has also been present in a number of the magazines which I have looked at. White space should be present for as little time as possible, to ensure the audience's attention is not drawn to that specific part of the page, as it will look different than the rest due to the fact there will be nothing there.

What I have learned from looking at student work:

Images are important for any magazine, and pixelated images can ruin the whole look of an article or the magazine entirely. Photoshop skills are also important. Ensuring that images have been cropped correctly or that the backgrounds of the images have been successfully removed are vital necessities that can make all the difference between an amateur magazine and a professional-quality magazine. Consistent font styles across the magazine, using three fonts as a maximum, and with all three looking vaguely familiar to one another, however different enough to cause emphasis which is desired by using three separate fonts. Keep the fonts simple, as irregular fonts decrease the sense of professionalism and overall decrease the magazine's quality.

Music Magazine Double Page Spread Deconstruction

I will now provide deconstructions for existing double page spreads of music magazine articles.

For this first double page spread, there is an image on the entire right-hand side page, yet the article is located entirely on the left-hand side of the page. There is also a pull quote which spreads across both pages, allowing the reader to associate the image with the main article. The pull quote is centred in the middle of the double page spread, and appears to split the article into two sections. This appears to be used to give the reader a break from the article halfway through, yet the pull quote is also large enough to draw the reader's attention directly to the quote when they arrive on that page, as well as the picture. A drop cap is is used at the beginning of the article on the letter 'D' to alert the reader that the article does indeed start there. It also helps to minimise the effect of looking at large chunks of text - much like the pull quote, it makes the article look more manageable than it would be were the whole thing unformatted and in plan columns with unchanging font sizes. The colours of the image do not match the colour of the article text or background, yet the red text does stand out rather well against the light background of the picture.

This article, similar to the previous, also features a large, dominant image on the left-hand side page of the subject of the article. Unlike the previous magazine, there is no text which covers the dominant image. Unlike the previous article, this one has a clear title 'USA got the love' (a pun of one of the article's subject's songs). The 'USA' text is placed behind the singer this time, which still allows an association between the picture and the article. Unlike the previous double-page spread, there is no pull quote. It is rather rare for a double page spread to not have a pull quote, however it is not necessarily compulsory, but does help add additional emphasis onto the magazine. Similar to the previous double page spread, a drop cap is also used to mark the beginning of the article. The drop cap font matches the font of the title, being a very 'posh' and 'elegant' font, which perhaps relates to the image of the singer, posing in a very elegant manner with an elegant surrounding. The drop cap also helps draw the attention away from the large chunks of text, and even though it does not make a big difference, convinces the reader into thinking there is less text than there actually is. The spread goes for a very monochromatic colour scheme, with black, white and grey being prominent throughout the spread. The only exception to this is the read cloth which the singer is sitting on. This bright, vibrant colour helps add to the elegant theme which had already been featured via the title font and the drop cap.

For the final image, there is also a large, dominant article title, situated at the top of the article. The title is not covering or behind the subject of the article, and merely overlaps on the pages, which is similar to how the previous two double-page spreads presented the prominent text. A pull quote is present in this double-page spread, much like the first one. Unlike the first spread, there are instances of both a pull quote and an article title. Much like the previous two double page spreads, a drop cap has been used to signify the beginning of the article. It is clear to the reader that the large 'S' is where the beginning of the article will start. The drop cap font matches the font used in the article title (the pull quote also does this). Having the same font run through the majority of the article creates a sense of consistency and helps the article as a whole maintain focus and keep the reader's attention, and does not drag their attention to one specific section of the double page spread. Finally, the colour scheme is a very strange one, being a brown/beige/black colour scheme. This strange colour scheme relates to the article itself, discussing the 'power' of Simon Cowell. In the image, Simon Cowell is relatively calm, relating to the use of the lighter colours such as beige and white, while the black and brown colours still help to emphasise this feeling of importance or power.

Inspirational Music Videos

Here are three examples of music videos which feature music similar to that of which I will focus on in my magazine:

For this first one, I have picked the music video 'Read My Mind' by The Killers. This is a prime example of the type of music which I will feature in my magazine. The genre is alternative rock, one of the few sub-genres which my magazine will be centred around. The Killers are a very well known band and should they be featured in the magazine, could be a very crucial selling point.

For my second music video, I have picked the song Celestine by Spector. This song is an indie-rock song, a genre that is making a return in the charts and becoming gradually more popular. Because of this niche of magazines that are focused primarily on this increasingly popular genre, I believe that this will be a clear selling point for the magazine.

For my final music video, I have selected 'Little Talks' by 'Of Monsters and Men'. They are a relatively new band from Iceland who have just released their debut album, yet their first single 'Little Talks' became very well known amongst fans of the genre, and reached number 12 in the UK charts. This impressive achievement for a new band means that there is a selling point in reporting about the band. The style of this song is indie rock/indie folk, which is a genre also becoming increasingly popular because of bands like Mumford & Sons, making this type of sub-genre a compelling selling point too.

Main Task Proposal Table

Below is a proposal table for my music magazine which I plan to create.

Type of Magazine (fashion, music, etc)	Music
Name of Magazine	Soundcheck
Audience (male/female)	Both male and female
Audience (attitudes and interests)	Interests revolving around mainly alternative rock and indie music
Outlet (where it can be bought from?)	All major newsagents and magazine outlets, including supermarkets etc.
Necessary Information	Barcode, Issue Number, Issue Date, Price
Selling Point	The selling point for the magazine is the exclusive interviews and information which are present to no other publication
Theme (article)	Interview with an artist who is doing well in the charts and creates music similar to the styles mentioned in the target audience section.
Images Front Cover	Large image of a silhouette of this ‘new artist’ who will be revealed inside the magazine, as well as Possible sub-images taken from the magazine interior.
Images Inside	Images inside include images of artists performing and relaxing to create a sense of the magazine focusing on both the music and the artists to appeal to both fans of the music, and fans of the artist themself.

Preliminary Task Designs

For my preliminary task, I designed a college magazine front cover and contents page based on the previous research which I had carried out. I also tried to follow the design of my flat plans as much as I could, however changed minor details where I felt necessary. I created these preliminary tasks in Adobe Photoshop.

The contents page follows the basic design of a magazine cover. The masthead is located at the top of the page and contrasts well against the light blue sky background. The masthead itself, however, does not stand out when compared to the other text on the page and the only think which causes it to stand out at all is the fact that it is slightly slanted. The lighting is also not great, as the background image is lighter than the subjects in the foreground. A slight colour scheme is present, being white, black, and the light green of the grass. The light green colour suits the theme of the magazine (relaxing and calming). The sell lines offer minor details about the article contents, however do not offer enough to entice the reader and grab their attention.

For the contents page, I opted for a similar colour scheme of black, white and the light green background. In my own opinion, this colour scheme does not work well, despite it's positive and relaxing connotations. The layout works very well as a 'black and white table/grid' style layout, and the main image and the sub-image also help to emphasise and give more information about specific articles. The sub-headings give vague ideas about the articles, however more specific sub-text may be required underneath each sub-heading. Some images and boxes could be rotated to cause the page to look less 'linear' and help emphasise specific areas of the magazine. Finally, the text itself is incredibly basic, and while being easy to read and clear, offers no sense of originality or diversity.

Preliminary Task Flat Plans

Below are my preliminary task flat plan designs, which will guide me through the design process of creating my preliminary task (which involves creating a college magazine front cover and contents page based on the research I have carried out).

 This contents page is a flat plan design for my preliminary task front cover. I have followed conventional designs for a front cover, by including a main image, 3-4 sell lines, a main sell line, a subheading and extra images which coincide with the smaller sell lines, and of course the masthead at the top of the page. With these conventions in place, I believe this will be an effective cover in terms of the content, yet the layout may let it down, as it appears very linear and uninteresting.

For the contents page, I decided to follow the conventions again, including the masthead, the term 'contents page' at the top of the page, as well as 1-2 images and some text about certain articles. On the right of the page, I have traditionally included the table of contents which will give a detailed rundown about the upcoming contents of the magazine. In my opinion, this contents page is very effective, including the layout, however the lack of images may let it down.

Magazine Content Pages Deconstruction

Below, I have attached a presentation demonstrating my analysis of existing music magazine contents pages. For a clearer image, the Slideshow can be shown in Full Screen.