Question 3&4 Magazine Cover

Q.3 How did your productions skills develop throughout this project?

If one was able to see the changes that had been made and the entire process of creating a magazine compared to last year, it would be quite astonishing. Now where do I begin; the first cover that had been made was appalling simply. It had been the first time I had used the Photoshop CS6 software and it all seemed so alien and baffling. Never would have I ever thought making a cover would be so time consuming or complex. The planning was just atrocious, the photo shoot was poor and photographs were taken from a mobile phone camera. I didn’t even submit my cover till a day before deadline and it was still incomplete. And the content page resembled a list someone makes before going out for groceries.         Yes, there were simpler and less elaborate alternatives than Photoshop to resort to in order to edit the cover. And they handled most of the technicalities within a few seconds. But upon hearing that next year Photoshop must be used on the advanced portfolio and will be graded, an ominous feeling became overbearing and something had to be done.

I’ve had quite a few pointless workshops after that, the instructor failed to realize that our experience with Photoshop at the time was somewhat similar to skedaddling on the moon. Lessons were taught hastily and left us even more confused than ever. And when one is confused about something, where does he or she stumble upon seeking the holiest and divine information? Why the internet, of course.

Every day online tutorials were watched over and over. Learning my way around alignment, gradient changes, texture alteration, playing with or distorting images and everything I needed to know. But of course I didn’t practice on the magazine cover immediately, but used a more equal adversary, a picture of my cat.

And a couple months and internet bills paid later, I started working on the advanced portfolio cover and had a proper DSLR camera. I made the decision of creating a Travel and Tourism magazine even before we were instructed to start working on the advanced portfolio. For three reasons mainly; first reason naturally would be to avoid the catastrophic errors faced, such as on the foundation portfolio. Second reason was that a Travel and Tourism magazine requires a lot of work; travelling around for the photo shoot, props and other equipment. This would be no simple task as it can’t be shot at home or school like the foundation portfolio and would require tons of time. Final reason was that our Media Studies teacher claimed she has never had a student who chose tourism as a magazine genre before and the risk was actually kind of motivating and encouraging.

And at this point using Photoshop seemed significantly less complicated. Obviously there are various options and functions that I still don’t have my head around. But I suppose Photoshop is identical to an entire galaxy. Thousands and thousands of unexplored areas, but at this moment I already glad where I am, skedaddling on the moon.


Q.4 HOW DID U INTEGRATE TECH-SOFTWARE, HARDWARE AND ONLINE IN THIS PROJECT?

Well first thing’s first, High Definition images were absolutely essential in the making of the cover, content and double spread page. And I was fortunate enough to be able to purchase a Nikon D5100 DSLR camera. Not the best of cameras on the market, sure, but certainly a boost up from a cell phone camera and gave me the results I wanted. It helped in capturing those crisp, serene pictures that a travel magazine usually tends to have. And travel magazines usually do use photos that are of several different areas unlike fashion or music genres that can be taken ‘underneath one roof’.

Next step was to find an adequate shooting site where variety of different places, decent lighting and subjects were conveniently reachable. I had to do some research using the internet on the northern side of Pakistan before making a firm decision. I had to consider places of high rates of tourism, weather, potential road blocks due to landslides or other causes, reasonable hotel rooms and of course distance from the current city. And then a city on the mountain side, Naran, Kaghan Valley, approximately 8,200 feet high from sea level and 600 km away from my city, was my shooting location for the magazine cover.

Around this time I was a rookie Photoshop CS6 user, but I had a lot of help from online tutorials. I hadn’t ever realized how useful some online tips can be till one day I was looking up ‘how to add gradients to font’. And saw some recommended videos which deeply enlightened me. After having learned the step by step instructions, I started to use these techniques more and more into my work. I used to think that perhaps the outlook of the cover should be from a more superficial perspective, but in the end the little details were beyond significant. Such as font texture, removing some of the aspects of the background image that were making it rather troublesome to add font. For instance, the mountains on the cover had little splatters of snowfall which made it difficult to add a conspicuous and sufficient text. Nothing seemed to connect and made it unappealing. But I learned to clear out some of the snow using the ‘Clone tool’, which again I learned how to use from online tutorials, was truly was a life saver.

There are many other ways in which technology helped even before I started working on the cover. Obvious examples, such as the magazine covers of professional magazines which I analysed. Some of the inspiration I got for my cover came from these magazines. The layout, structure and conventions which I didn’t know about. And also converting the results of the questionnaire into pie charts using online generators.