Skills Development Evaluation

A2 Media Studies

Describe and evaluate your skills development over the course of your Foundation Portfolio. The focus of this evaluation must be on skills development

My first task in the first year was a preliminary task to create a college magazine front cover and contents page. This had to incorporate the conventions of any existing magazines such as headlines, sell lines, flash’s etc. This magazine was to be aimed at students at a minimal cost or which was published on the web. This initial task was to see which skills and requirements we already had and which we needed to learn or improve upon before we could start the foundation portfolio for the first year.

For my foundation portfolio, I had to create a music magazine cover, contents page and double page spread for a particular genre of music which targeted a specific audience. These magazine elements had to include all the codes and conventions of any existing music magazine and had to have the feel and look of a real magazine of that particular music genre. For my concept I decided to create an indie music magazine which incorporated certain conventions from magazines such as Kerrang and NME. This magazine in turn would target an audience with a demographic age range of 15-24 as this was the target audience that would generally listen to this genre of music.

Before I started AS Media Studies I had limited skills in making something like this magazine. I had never used Photoshop before, the fundamental programme, in which we made these magazine layouts, and therefore had never used any of the tools in Photoshop to achieve a magazine that looked like a professional print. The only skills that I could bring to the table was photographing decent images to include in my music magazine and how to manipulate them in terms of size and width, I could not however change the way the actual image looked, for example: brightness, porcelain skin effect, vanishing spots etc. I also knew how to create shapes, add text and add colour to both text and shapes. This helped me to create and lay out my masthead with the headline and the various sell lines on the page. With the use of the shapes I could create a flash that would catch a potential reader’s eye.
At the beginning of the course having never used Photoshop it was quite daunting to start from scratch however, I think the preliminary task where we had to produce a college magazine helped to develop my skills and understanding of how to use Photoshop and helped me enormously when it came to producing my music magazine as I had gained the basic skills to start work on it.

The first thing I learnt to use, and learnt to use effectively, was the quick selection tool. As the images were the most important thing of the college and the music magazines, this tool was vital and was the first tool I could use with confidence. The second tool which helped me tremendously was the blur tool. This helped to smooth out any rough edges after I had used the quick selection tool and make the image appear smoother and like it fit within the context of page. My first use of these tools together was on my college magazine. The use of the tool on the image was semi-successful, however since this production of the magazine, I have honed my technical skills and produced a better image for the front cover. For my final front cover I used the polygonal lasso tool as this cut around the image better than the quick selection tool and created a smoother outline. I used the polygonal lasso tool for the relatively straight parts around my model such as each side of her torso and parts of her arms, and the magnetic lasso tool for the curved parts such as her head, shoulders and hands, therefore reducing the overuse of the blur tool and creating a better, more professional outcome. The transform scale tool has been a massive help in making sure my text, images and shapes are the right size and fit on the page together.

For my final front cover design, the use of the lasso tool (which I discovered after a great exploration of Photoshop), transform scale, the blur tool, the character toolbar and the many other tools helped to create a front cover which by far had improved from the preliminary college magazine and the first draft because of the mass of skills I had learnt from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. I then carried these skills across to do my contents page and double page spread. With my contents page I relied heavily on the character toolbar as it consisted mainly of the articles featured in the magazine. This along with my double page spread created my final magazine.

When comparing my college magazine to my finished music magazine, the image is definitely better on the music magazine than the college magazine because of the use of the lasso tool to cut out the background of the image on the music magazine. This lasso tool was only discovered towards the end of the college year and therefore I only used the quick selection tool when cutting out my image on the college magazine. The image is also clearer on the college magazine and bigger after using the scale transform tool. This comparison shows how my skills over the AS year have developed dramatically with the technical ability I have required through using Photoshop for the whole year. The practise of using Photoshop for this type of work helps anyone to gain the skills required to complete this foundation portfolio and to complete it well. Having not being able to use any of the tools in Photoshop at the beginning of the year, the fact that I can now identify most of the tools shows how my skills have rapidly developed over the course of that year. The preliminary task definitely helped me to get a good footing in working out what all the buttons and tools did and without doing the preliminary task first I wouldn’t have been able to create the music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread that I managed to design and create.