Skills Development Essay

Before I started the media course at AS level I had little understanding of what conventions where, so for my college magazine I tried to make it look like another magazine by literally copying it, but I knew the basics such as where the title of the magazine would go. However when it came to putting together the front cover I did not know about the amount of photo manipulation that went into making the main icon appealing to the target audience, so I just cut around them and placed them where I wanted them. Another thing which I did not know how to use before the course was Photoshop especially adding layers to make the editing process a lot less stressful and easier to do.

The digital technology which I learned to use along my AS journey was predominantly the use of the photo manipulation software Adobe Photoshop as that is what I used to assemble and edit both of my magazines which I made over the course of last year. There was a lot of techniques which I learned in order to make my magazine look as professional as possible and this ranges from making my main icon look appealing and fit in with how the media would portray a young male student and combined with some research as to what my target audience would see as the ideal student, so I learned how to remove spots and make the hair look as perfect as I could and removing imperfections to make them more appealing and changing the lighting to match that of the background as I learned that you can take a photo of the model and a separate one of the background and just cut the model out and place them on the background so they look like they are there and also removing the hassle of getting everything perfect in one shot, and as I found out it helps if you want to replace the stance of the model as you can easily just take another photo of the model and replace the one which you already had.

My Creativity has grown over the course of last year as I have already mentioned that at the start when I had to do a college magazine I just copied an existing magazine but replaced it with my magazines title. However when it came to making my music magazine those other magazines became merely influential to my final product as I used them as my research. My creativity has also grown by me thinking outside the box, by gaining the ability to create my own graphic for a background of my front cover and also for my double page spread. I also created my own logo for the magazine instead of just placing the letters ‘IMW’ on the front of the magazine the logo gives the finishing touch to the magazine and makes it look more realistic and portrays the ideology inside of it. My creativity was limited by certain conventions of a magazine, however some of these conventions can be bent slightly to make the magazine different and thus attract more people to It.

Research and planning has proven to work well for me in terms of developing my skills within Photoshop and in relation to conventions of existing media products as it has allowed me to find out how the professionals do things and that there is a certain style within certain genres for example colours and researching magazines from my chosen genre has allowed me to see what fits in with them. Researching and planning has helped me to create a better music magazine compared to my college one as for the college one I did neither of them or just research but on a very miniscule level, however planning the music magazine by drawing it first gave me a clear direction on what I had to do and an aim for the magazine whereas on my college magazine I had all of these ideas just floating around in my head and I couldn’t try them all out because it would have just looked a mess and I would have had to start again.

After I had finished making my college magazine I compared it to my draft of my contents page and they looked nothing like each other and they shared no similarities, which is a problem as that is one of the main things that needs to be included but when you compare all three pieces of the music magazine they all share the same theme and colour scheme so in post-production it all looks very neat and tidy and like they belong in the same magazine.

Learning about conventions really helped me to get the most out of my music magazine as that is one department which was lacking in my college one. One example of that is the colour of the text on the college magazine clashed with the colour of the background which makes it quite difficult to spot and does not grasp the attention of the audience who will just walk by it as it does not stand out. After learning about conventions I used them in my music magazine and the text is easy to read and stands out so the target audience will notice it and buy it. It’s not just that though the conventions are everywhere even though they are obvious like a music magazine is obviously going to have a star on the cover taking up the majority of the cover, there is not going to be something like an instrument in their place.

Overall I think that my skills have developed a long way since the beginning of the AS course and I feel that I am still learning new things which can help me improve future products that I make. Looking back now after what I have learned I feel that I could have changed my magazine to make it so much better than what it is, which is good because it shows my progression and I look forward to making my music video in A2 Media.