Induction Evaluation

For my induction project I was asked to create a front cover for a music magazine using a cover image that I had taken and containing at least three sell lines.

I used a Canon DSLR to take some pictures for the front cover of my magazine. From this I learnt how to manually focus the camera using the focus rings and how to zoom in. I also learnt about the difference between landscape and portrait mode. For this project I was required to take a medium close up portrait. At first the images I took were out of focus, but after practicing the quality improved. We were asked to have our images lit from the left but this was difficult to do, as it was a cloudy day. Despite this, most of my images were of a good quality and were fairly well lit. I took several different images with different backgrounds and found some of them to be problematic. For example, using a fence as a background was too difficult for me to focus correctly. The subject I was photographing was very co-operative and allowed me to take several different shots until I was happy with the images. The final image I chose is in focus and well lit so the subject can be clearly seen. The background is quite dark, making the text on the cover easy to read. The background is tilted slightly; if I were to re-do this project I would angle the camera so the background was in line with the subject.

To create the magazine cover I had to learn to use Photoshop and have mastered many of the features. I used the text tool, rectangle tool, elliptical marquee tool and the paint bucket tool. I found most of the tools easy to use after I had practiced. While using the elliptical marquee tool, I held down shift to ensure a perfect circle was created. I occasionally found the text tool difficult to use as I kept forgetting how to move the text, though on the whole I was successful. I added effects to several of the elements on my front cover using the fx button, such as stroke, drop shadow and bevel and emboss. Mostly these effects were successful though I could have experimented more with the opacity and colours of some things to make my cover more interesting. All of the writing I used was white with a black outline so it would be easy to read against the dark backgrounds. I used the rectangle and elliptical marquee tools to create backgrounds for my sell lines. All of these were different colours so my magazine cover didn’t look to uniform and boring. If I were to improve my front cover I would experiment more with different effects to make it more interesting. I would also use a variety of fonts as all of mine are the same and fairly boring. My magazine cover is successful because it is colourful and uses a variety of techniques in the sell lines such as ellipses and question marks to intrigue potential buyers.