production diaries

1. Production Diaries
fmp

2. Week 1
This week I have been creating a proposal for my final major project. I am feeling fairly confident
about this part of the project because I am very set on what I want to do which is a streetwear
magazine. I enjoyed the research part of it and looking up brands and people that have inspired me
within making my own brand for this project. I have also looked into some photographers that I love
and want to make work similar to which I’m really excited to do. Because I have done this much
research I definitely think I have enough knowledge to succeed I think I will go on to research more
people within the industry just to get a little more information but I think I’ve got enough at the
moment to proceed with my work and to have a good enough understanding on the industry of
streetwear and what it’s like to get into. I think before I start production I will research how people
came up with things like logo designs to get some ideas on how to find more inspiration for my
brand logo and also look into some similar magazines to what im hoping to make because at this
point I have only been looking into people and brands and not focused on the whole picture which
is a magazine. I also need to look into some more articles to write. In addition for things like shoots I
need to find things like locations and work out what kind of camera I want to use for the shoots. I
think because I have one more day of lessons to finish this I will do more research and then I will
have produced enough work but I think right now I haven’t produced enough. The only thing I
would improve is taking more time into this task due to me missing the first day of this week it
wasn’t ideal and I am going to have to work a lot harder to get it finished either within lesson time
or in my own time.

3. Week 2
This week I have started research. I started off with some audience research
both secondary and primary. My secondary research was done with media
kits to look at who likes similar things to my project like similar magazines
etc. Then for my primary research I’ve done a poll on my Instagram to get
some surveyed answers. I feel like my research is going well and I have got
enough work sorted and planned out well. I have more than enough work
planned out. Research is something I enjoy doing because I get to find things
out about the thing that I’m looking into. I think the amount of work that I
did for my research was more than enough and I maybe would have done
more if I had of looked into more things but they would just be extra things
to look into. I could improve this work by looking into more likely things and
research further into more things.

4. Week 3
This week I have been carrying on with research. This has been both existing products and
audience research. I researched other streetwear magazines to look into the industry. I’ve
learnt that the industry is very creative and unique. I did a poll on my Instagram to get a
bigger response about the subject. I think that this was useful and got me a good look into
who my audience should be especially since my Instagram is mainly followed by 18-24 year
olds therefore this was my target audience. It has definitely helped a lot due to me getting
a more detailed look into my audience. I can definitely take this forward and it will help me
within the making of the magazine and brand so I know who to target things towards. My
research has amplified my passion for this project and made me realise how enthusiastic
about this. The only problem I think I will have is money to create my own clothing brand
however I will be working on getting the funds to do things like this. I think the Instagram
poll was very successful because it gave me a large overlook on my audience. Additionally
the existing products has been interesting because I didn’t know there was so much print
content within this industry so I enjoyed researching this.

5. Week 4
This week I wanted to look into problem solving. I wanted to look into things that
could possibly go wrong and fix it before it happens or have a way to fix it if it was
going to happen in the future. Things to do with every little bit that could possibly
happen. Potential issues are things like models being unreliable or running out of
storage in the camera. There are simple ways to get over things like these for
example to help the idea of having unreliable models, its looking into having
reliable models and making sure days are available for models and communication.
W here as things like not having battery on the camera can be solved by just
bringing spare batteries or making sure the battery is fully charged before a shoot. I
think this has helped a lot due to having ways set up to solve any problem that
possibly could come up. I will make sure any problems I have will be documenting
on my weekly progress posts on this powerpoint. I think I will look into how to solve
more issues that I may run into and do some issues within this project and will go
step by step and hopefully cover every issue that I could possibly run into.

6. Week 5
This week I have been working on more problem solving and production
experiments. I personally think this has worked out very well and its given me
enough time to work out things that could possibly go wrong and avoid them . I
don’t think there are many issues I need to look into any further except from things
that will happen during production that I have to deal with at the time. I have
looked into using new lenses and creating different looks of photos and how to
work different lenses. Planning next week I think will be easily done because I
already have a good idea of what I want to do and create it is just a means of really
planning it and getting it organised. My website is now up to date and everything I
need is on my website and I think the only thing I need to do now is finishing the
problem solving and production experiments

7. Week 6
Planning is starting off well although I’m struggling with certain aspects because they will rely on production
alone how everything works out at that point because things like colour schemes are mostly going to depend
on the pages and the photos that I take. Most of the clothing I want to use is yellow/red or just neutral colours
so I think planning things like that should be easy when it comes to it. I have already planned some general
colour schemes. I have looked into layouts from a streetwear magazine called Hype Beast which has a really
minimalistic layout but makes it look quite modern and unique therefore that’s why I took inspiration from it. I
also looked into the aesthetic of this same magazine because it was quite a different look. I saw some photos
that were lit with orange and blue lighting that looked really cool and I wanted to recreate something similar
which I tried this morning in the studio which I think went quite well and looked fairly good but not like the
photos in the magazine so I think I will have to edit them within photo shop. I think im quite good at planning
however not everything is always something I can plan so I am guilty of leaving some things to just fall into
place or get let down with plans like photoshoots therefore its hard to keep things completely by a specific
plan. Also for example this week I’ve been planning but got distracted and done an experiment with the
lighting and the projector so I can easily get focused onto other things. I think colour schemes are the hardest
planning for me because it completely depends on the specific page and photos so I struggle to plan this and
shoots are hard because of relying on other people. From what I am aware however my website is completely
up to date. I have to plan fonts and some more shoots and locations so that is what is currently on my to do list
for this next week.

8. Week 7
I like to think I am well planned for production and that I will be able to work well
and on time for production however I am worried that timing with shoots and
production might be an issue because I feel like its going to be difficult to get
everything organised completely but I think it will eventually work out and be fine
because I will keep to a schedule. My planning has worked well because I have
things worked out well and something that will be easy enough to get done in the
time I have but also give me a challenge for fmp to really stretch my ability to get
this completely done and finished in 7 weeks. I have to still fully work on my
schedule fully but most of my planning is finished now and that’s everything that I
have to be done. I will be referring back to my planning a lot during my production
so that I can keep on track with what I want to do because I very often get
distracted and end up creating something different My planning has never really
been an issue its more to do with people being unreliable for shoots and things. I
have not struggled as much with the planning side of things.

9. Week 8
Within the first week of production I did a shoot with Emily for a double page
spread that I wanted to create. I wanted something that would be colourful.
However the photos came out black and white which I changed by putting a
gradient layer on top to give the photos a bit of colour for my magazine because I
don’t want it to be plain and boring realistically. I would like it to be unique and
different. This worked quite well in my personal opinion. In addition I started
working on the layout for my double page spreads it was something that I wanted
to organize early on because it can be a difficult thing to organise. I didn’t get alot
done this week due to being absent but I did do some photography and photo
editing which went well.

10. Week 9
Within the second week I started writing articles as I had no pictures at that point in time. Therefore I wanted
to create some articles to get photos to match the article. This was because the photos are easier to match
with the articles rather than writing articles to match the photos. I wanted a variety of articles therefore I
started writing one about the evolution of streetwear and then wrote another one about the connection
between music and streetwear as an industry. I wanted to create something that was interesting but also
hadn't really been written about before so I took some inspiration from other articles but not a lot. I worked on
laying some more double page spreads out to be able to really get an understanding of how everything was
going to look eventually. I planned another shoot for the following week which should go well and tried to
make sure I had enough to do. I also attempted to work on some more logo ideas for my clothing brand that I
wanted to create because I knew that was something I had to organise. So my plans for next week are more
photoshoots and more editing because the photos are a key part of my project and my magazine.

11. Week 10
Within the third week of production I worked on another shoot with Amy and Liv. This was difficult to get the
photos right because they were struggling to focus, however we did get some good photos that I liked enough
that I could use. I edited these photos so that I could place them in my magazine and this is when I created my
first photo only double page spread with no text. I found this quite hard because lining them up right wasn’t
easy to make them look professional so that actually took me a while. Therefore I chose to include two full
body photos, a photo of the jumpers they were wearing and a photo of the shoes so that people could get a
full view of the whole outfit that each of them were wearing. I gave them a double page spread each so there
is one dedicated to Liv and one to Amy which I enjoyed creating and I think they turned out quite well over all.
I also started an article on the newest shoe releases according to size's website. I wanted to include the
newest releases to keep it up to date although by the time production has finished the shoes will have been
released. This article didn’t really have a lot to say because it was just explaining the shoes and when they were
being released. Therefore that didn’t take too long. I Also found some sketches of the shoes that I put on the
page to hold the space until I had a better idea of what to put on the page as an image for this article because I
was struggling at this point in time.

12. Week 11
This week I did a graphic design piece for a article I'm writing about an upcoming brand. What I wanted was a
vapor wave type style to it but in black and white. So I created a grid on photoshop that looked 3D so that was
the background done which took me a whole lesson at least. I then wanted to create something skate related
which I decided was going to be a new released deck by a brand called "Glitch" I thought this was a cool idea
because I wanted some sort of advert but not an obvious advert in my magazine. I created the board with the
glitch "logo" on the deck which ended up looking cool which I liked. I wrote an article on the brand to make it
less like an advert and more like a brand featuring in the magazine. In addition to doing these I also worked on
more layous as this was a constant thing with my work as I wanted it to look right completely. I was constantly
tweaking things that I didn’t think looked 100% right.

13. Week 12
This week I started it off with doing an amazing shoot with my model Aaron. I wanted the aesthetic to be dark
around him but for him to be lit up therefore I used the flash on the camera on a night when we went on a
walk. We made it a really casual shoot and he just walked as I took photos. None of them were majorly posed
which I really enjoyed the look of because they matched the aesthetic I wanted to include. I didn’t want
anything to look too posed but a little posed is okay with certain models if that’s how they work better. I came
out of that shoot with exactly what I wanted and everything worked really well. I actually didn’t edit these
photos a lot because they came out so well. There were a few blurry ones but 80% of the photos could have
been used in my magazine. I took these photos and wrote an article about Aaron becoming a designer and
working with other brands as well as being a large model in the industry which I was quite proud of as an
article. I Then organised everything to look right on double page spreads and made it fit together and again
gave Aaron a dedicated double page spread of just photos of him which worked really well because all the
photos were so similarly lit they fit together really easy. I also decided I wanted one of these photos as my front
cover so at the moment I have a headshot of him with white block writing saying "Pistol" in all capitals in the
font Lemon Milk which is what all my headings are going to be in while all my articles are in times roman
regular to keep it simple.

14. Week 13
This week I worked on doing another shoot with liv and charlie which
actually worked really well. I wanted another shoot with liv because
she had picked up something from the new supreme x andy howell
collection that I wanted to write an article about so I wanted some
photos of her in the tshirt she had bought. Charlie also dresses in a lot
of streetwear brands so I knew he was the perfect person to have
model for me aswell. So a shoot with these two went amazingly well.
The photos all came out amazing although they are a little posed. I
edited these photos and worked on getting them included on the
layouts that I had set up and wrote the whole article this week which
made it easier to work everything together on the double page
spreads.

15. Week 14
This week I have gone through and re-edited all my photos to match a
different aesthetic that I wanted and I wanted the photos to be more
heavily edited that they origninally were. I wanted to add a blur effect
to some of them and colourize a few more and just work on some
different edits for my photos. I wanted am “edgy” aesthetic for my
magazine and that’s what I wanted to go for while editing my photos. I
just realised that my photos just looked a little bland with no editing at
all on them so I think they were due something more interesting doing
to them & then when I replaced the original photos with the newly
edited photos it really did change the entire look of the magazine in
such a positive way. Overall the finished product is a piece of work im
very proud of.