Evaluation of College Magazine

By Dan Briston

How did you use your time?

I think I used the time available very wisely with the college magazine. I utilized all the available computer time in college hours to create my magazine. I spent a lot of that time editing my photo for the cover and trialling different photos for their advantages and disadvantages. Although I piled up all my work so that it had to be put into blogs and scrapbook at the very end, it was organised and cohesive. I am happy with how I spent my time, as it didn’t cause a great amount of stress in doing in, as I knew that if I missed the deadline, I could catch up afterwards, I did manage to meet the deadline, though. I think the loss of lessons was the biggest reason for being behind or producing below-standard work, as the class was rushed towards the end.

What was the project about?

• I had to create the front page and contents page of the local College magazine. It had to incorporate a medium-close-up photograph of a student, with some appropriately laid out test and masthead.

What research did you do?

I was quite interested in the photography of Josef Sudek for this project. Even though it is neither of people or particularly relevant to college, the tones that come from a lot of his photos are brilliant. They are predominantly grey, there are barely any blacks or whites, but they still manage to be eye-catching. Many of his photos are of urban and suburban landscapes in panorama. I also looked at some other photographers who regularly contribute to Kingpin Skateboard magazine: Deeli and Sam Ashley, who both shoot a lot of black and white digital photos and post-process them.

Previous student’s work

• I looked at many of the recommended blogs on the OCR ‘Get Ahead’ website. This os one of the ones that was created with meticulous attention to detail. I think the cover would work very well in the purpose of the college magazine but there are two things I could pick up on.

• The cover image looks like the young lady is happy and having fun, but at the same time, her expression is laughable which may not serve good purpose for the mag, especially if it is to charge.

• The Masthead ‘Chenders’ is quite hard to interpret, however it is original. I imagine that the meaning is explained inside.

Target Audience

• The target audience for my college magazine was a captive and ‘standard’ college environment with little or no gender bias and a fairly specific spread of ages (16-19). It would be unlikely for an outsider of the college to purchase the magazine so this age range is quite accurate. I think in future, the magazine could have gender bias on alternate weeks. Possibly it could be edited by a female on issue and a male the next. It makes it fairer and gives a good representation for both sexes.

Reasons why…

• Why did I make the cover image grey/blue?I heavily edited the shot because I thought that normal black and white didn’t have enough attention-grabbing potential in it, so I added blue in to make it similar to a selenium tone development.

• Why did I use white text boxes?I used the white fill on the text boxes becausez I wanted to use black text, which would have bled away if I had not used the white background. The white parts also helps give structure to the magazine, as the image is very left-aligned. I could have used text wrapping around the guitar a little better.

In the beginning…

• When I began the magazine, I started looking at large magazines that were quite conventional in style. I then gained my own ideas and made attempts at creating things that were unconventional, because I got bored of the same old things in magazine convention. I tried to make things still work, though they were different. I created only one mock-up, which stuck to conventions and I didn’t like it. Soon after, I dived in and started shooting. I gained the photo I wanted from one shoot, which was very lucky. I spent a long time editing this one photo, but it looks great now.

Use of Software

• To create the college magazine, I used Microsoft Publisher with the aid of Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 and CS2 for editing my cover image.

• I found that the facilities on Publisher were very limited and not terribly expressive, however I am happy with my outcome.

• I was already fairly used to PSE 6, so I was mainly experimenting with some new techniques, such as the selenium tone effect.

Influences

• The main influences of the college magazine were, as always, skateboarding and music magazines. I took the idea of using a white frame from the style that Sidewalk use, as it gives a dark image more impact and the illusion of more contrast.

• I prefer the more abstract music magazines in terms of aesthetics, such as CLASH, for its vintage style mainly and its photography that abides by that style. It appears to be carefully edited digital work that appears to be from film cameras. I very much enjoy these effects.