Preliminary Task

Task Explanation

Our preliminary task was for us to create our own front cover and contents page for the college magazine Pulse by using Adobe Photoshop. We were required to include a mid close-up of somebody with a related main story on the cover, and for mine I decided to take a photo of my brother looking at a laptop, which relates to the story "Top Exam Tips!" because the image used had to be our own.



Evaluation
Overall I'm not very satisfied with preliminary task because of how unprofessional it looks; this was however expected since it was the first time I've properly used Photoshop. I found some aspects of creating my front cover easy, such as inserting text boxes and changing the colour of the writing, however merging my image in with the other parts of my page was a lot more difficult. This is because I had to get rid of the background and colour it all black, and you need a steady hand so that no parts of the person are cut off. Some areas (around his head in particular) look awkward and unnatural because of my shaky hand, and the quality of the image is also slightly grainy because it was taken on an iPhone. Therefore for my next task, I'm going to take my image on a better quality camera, and also practice cutting in neatly around images.

I kept the theme consistent in both my front cover and contents page, using neon and black because they contrast well and help the magazine stand out. It's also a similar colour scheme to what publishers of Dubstep magazines use, and Dubstep is a fairly new genre of music so my magazine will look fresh and new as well.



First Draft of Front Cover









































First Draft of Contents Page

 












Original Photograph (Placed on Cover)

 













Front Cover

 






Contents Page


















































How has the Preliminary Task Influnced my Ideas?
The main way in which the preliminary task has helped my ideas to progress was by giving me an insight into photoshop and helping me improve my layout/cropping skills before carrying out the main task. You can also see how my ideas have developed from the original hand-drawn drafts: the computer versions look a lot more vibrant, colourful and well laid out than the initial hand-drawn roughs because I've annotated them, seeing as they're just plans. This task has also helped me realise that in order for a cover to look professional, images need to be cropped precisely; the photograph of my brother on the cover looks very uneven and jaggedy because I've cut round the image so haphazardly. It's also encouraged me to try out new colour and layout ideas, since before this task I liked the prospect of a black and neon theme, however now I've seen it on my preliminary task, it looks rather tacky and unprofessional. It's helped me realise that a more mature colour scheme will be required, i.e. red, black and white.