The student learned about various technologies through creating a magazine product. They used Pixelmator and Adobe programs like Photoshop and InDesign to design pages. Pixelmator was useful for image editing while InDesign facilitated page layouts. The student was surprised by the level of skill needed and costs of hardware/software but was proud of their non-traditional contents page design.

1. PATRICK COLL
CANDIDATE NUMBER: 1102
CENTRE NUMBER: 64135
ST.ANDREWS CATHOLIC
SCHOOL
UNIT G321

2. QUESTION SIX
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this
product?

3. Based on the high specification and performance, I decided on using
Apple’s iMac and MacBook range as hardware to construct my product.
I am familiar with Apple’s operating system (OSX) as I have regularly
used this system at home and previously at school for other creative
tasks. Apple have a good reputation for producing high quality
products for the average ‘Pro’ user, who would most likely be using the
product to produce creative media products. Although Adobe
Photoshop CS5 was installed on the school computers I decided that I
would work better at home as I would not be limited to the 50 minute
sessions offered at school. To do this I installed a Photoshop
alternative, Pixelmator, on to my MacBook, which is a program
exclusive to the Apple Mac App store, which offers all of the features
and tools I would need to create my media product.

4. In some areas I felt Pixelmator was better than Photoshop CS5 as it
was optimized for the Apple iMac product range, however in other
areas Photoshop had the advantage. Pixelmator is able to open and
export Photoshop (.psd) files so as a result I was able to work
simultaneously with Photoshop and Pixelmator. The camera I used
to take the photos featured in my magazine was the iPhone 6’s 8-
megapixel camera, which performs particularly well in regards to
lighting. Although the picture quality is not as sharp as that of a
DSLR camera, the photo’s were a smaller size so were easier to
manipulate in better quality in InDesign. This connotes how
consumers are now becoming prosumers and how they don’t need
expensive technologies to produce media products of a good
standard.

5. However, for the Double Page Spread of ‘Maestro’ magazine I decided to use Adobe
InDesign CS5, as I could not find an alternative on the Mac App Store. Adobe
InDesign CS5 is ‘The industry-leading page design and layout toolset lets you work
across desktop and mobile devices to create, preflight and publish everything from
printed books and brochures to digital magazines, iPad apps, eBooks and interactive
online documents.’ This program was suited to the task as it had a multitude of text
manipulation tools that were not available on any other program.

6. Primarily when creating the magazine masthead logo for ‘Maestro
Magazine’, I used Pixelmator to create a blank square canvas. I
then used the ‘rectangle tool’ to draw a square in which I applied
a solid blue colour, which I added to my colour swatches.
Following this I added the triangle symbol I found in system
symbols and coloured it white. I then used my blue colour swatch
to type the name of my magazine ‘Maestro magazine’ in the
Avenir Black font style. To give the image the vignette effect, I
decided to save the image as a JPEG and then reopen the image
in Pixelmator to add a vignette effect to the image, which gave it
a three dimensional effect. Following this I added the gradient
background effect to my front cover by creating a rectangle the
size of the page and applying a gradient effect using the gradient
tool.

7. When manipulating the image for my front cover, I
initially applied the Apple process filter on my
phone, which I then Airdropped to my MacBook. I
could then import this image into Pixelmator,
where I would crop out the background. To do so I
used the ‘Quick selection tool’ (w), which allows the
user to highlight the areas of the image they want
to keep using their cursor and then using the other
colour they can deselect the areas they wish to
remove using the brushes. This was effective way
of cropping out the background as it was quick
and since I did not have any hair on display
because I was wearing a baseball cap I did not have
to go use the hair removal tool. In addition to this I
used the ‘spot removal tool’ (s) to remove all
blemishes and freckles on my face, to give it a
more professional look.

8. For the text featured on my front cover I used several fonts downloaded from the
copyright free source www.dafont.com, which I thought suited the style of my
magazine. I chose the colours white and grey for the text on the front cover as they
colours heavily contrasted the dark colours used in the front cover image. The only
shadow I applied to the text on the front cover was the ‘Single’ and ‘that’ in ‘New
Debut Single Wasn’t Expecting that’ as the white text could not be seen over the white
hand. For the graffiti/ text featured in the background of my front cover I typed text,
used the layer’s tab to place the text above the background layer and then applied a
gradient similar to that of the background.

9. The contents page of my magazine was also created in Pixelmator,
however it could be argued that it would have been easier to use Adobe
InDesign CS5 as it offers more text manipulation tools. In Pixelmator
there is various text manipulation tools for system fonts featured at the
top of the window, which helped me to vary the spacing of the text
featured at the top of the page. For the Band index section of my
contents page I initially made a rectangle box using the rectangle tool,
which I then duplicated and changed the colour to light gray. I was then
able to group the layers together, align them using the ruler tool, and
duplicate them so I could include more bands in my magazine. For all of
the images featured in my contents page, I followed the same procedure
to remove the background, which I then added a black and white filter
suing the image effects panel on Pixelmator.

10. For the subscription section of my magazine, I added two front covers, my
first draft which is behind and my good draft which is in front. I used the
free transform tool to adjust the size of the images accordingly and to rotate
them so they are at different angles to make it look like a stack of
magazines. I then applied a shadow effect, from the styles panel to make it
looks that the magazines are on top of the other layer. The advertisement
banner at the bottom of the page however was created on Pixelmator as I
needed to manipulate the image. I applied the gradient background and
added text with 5 stars, which I used the shape tool to create. For the image
I used the image effects tab in Pixelmator to select the Edges effect, which
highlights all of the edges in the picture and lets you choose the colour of
the outline. This was effective as it meant that I could use the same image
featured on my DPS but with a different effect to make it look like a
completely different photo.

11. For the editorial featured on my contents page I used the ‘pen tool’ (p) in Adobe
Photoshop CS5, which allowed me to draw a custom shaped box in which any text
inside it would wrap around, so it did not overlap with anything else on the page.
Although I was hesitant to use the tool at first, in the long term I found it useful for
wrapping text around images and for making the equivalent of a text box. It was
important when mentioning my magazine name in the editorial and on other parts of
the page that I used the same font style and colours as I used for my Masthead so I
could keep the branding of the magazine consistent throughout to establish brand
identity.

12. The ‘ruler tool’ (CMD – R) and guides were particularly useful for this page of the magazine as
it was essential that all of the different features were aligned correctly to make the magazine
look professional and aesthetically pleasing for the reader. The eye drop tool was another tool
that I used frequently in my contents page as I was able to take the original blue colour from
the front cover and make it slightly lighter to give a sense of layers to my contents page. In
some cases, I would group/link layers, so I could manipulate more than one layer at a time,
this meant that I could keep everything aligned when reorganizing my work. An example of
linking layers was when I was duplicating the boxes for the ‘Band Index’ as it was important
that all of the boxes were exactly the same size and were exactly aligned on the page. By
linking the layers, I was able to resize the Band Index box as one big image, which was useful
when deciding the layout of my contents page. I was additionally able to duplicate layers over
from my front cover such as the Maestro logo and a smaller image of the front cover for the
subscription box. Furthermore, I decided to use the eyedropper tool to save a selection of
colours from the front cover that I could then add to the swatches palette and use again on
the contents page to keep with the brand identity of the magazine. These features of
Photoshop particularly helped me in speeding up my workflow so I could get the page created
quicker and move onto the other pages of my magazine.

13. To create the Drop capital featured in the double page spread of my magazine I used
the drop capital tool on Adobe InDesign CS5, which was simply and quick to use. I
simply highlighted the letter I wanted to increase the size of and increased the size of
the letter in regards to the amount of lines it takes up, using the drop capital tool. The
text wrap tool also came in useful when organizing the text on the page as it meant
the text was able to wrap around any of the other objects on the page so it could be
easily read by the reader. This was particularly useful when wrapping text around the
Black and White boxes on the page as it meant I didn’t have to manually draw a text
box, cutting around the other objects.
www.graphics.com

14. When using Adobe InDesign CS5 I initially created
a document with 2 pages, a bleed and 3 columns
as a template for my magazine, which I then edited
to create the DPS. For the first page of my DPS I
created the background gradient image and some
of the text on Pixelmator as it was not possible to
manipulate the photo’s using Adobe InDesign CS5.
I applied a black and white filter to the image as
the original image was taken on a dull day so there
was not much natural light. The gradient was
additionally also easy to replicate from previous
pages as it just consisted of a rectangle, which I
applied a gradient to using the gradient tool.

15. One feature in InDesign I found particularly usef was the ability
to link text so it would automatically move into the next text
box/column when full, as in Pixelmator and Photoshop I would
have had to manually assemble the text accordingly. This
dramatically sped up the production process and made it easier
to just copy in my own original text after I had used placeholder
text to mark out where I wanted the text to go. When drawing
the different text boxes featured in my double page spread I
found it easier to use the pen tool to draw custom text boxes
that would fit around the other content on the page.
After opening my Pixelmator documents in Photoshop it was
easy to transfer layers over from my contents page and front
cover to InDesign as both Photoshop and InDesign are products
of Adobe. Therefore, I was able to copy over the page number
and web address without having to worry about the sizing of
the shapes and number to match the other pages. For the text
to fit exactly in the text boxes I constructed, I adjusted the size
of the text accordingly so none of it would disappear. ul

16. Before starting the project, the Adobe suite programs looked over complicated and
time consuming to use to produce a professionally looking product, however after
experimenting and watching tutorials on YouTube I was successfully able to reduce
my work flow and I managed to complete the first draft of my front cover within five
hours of work. In some cases, I had overestimated the amount of time and effort that
went into producing a magazine page, however I was surprised at how many
individual layers needed to be created to produce a professional looking page. If I
were to create a magazine set of pages again I would most likely use Pixelmator for
any photo manipulation, and a newer version of InDesign to arrange the content on
the page. I was additionally surprised at the cost of the software and hardware
required to produce a magazine page as each iMac/MacBook cost around the £1000
mark and the newer renditions of the Adobe software could cost around £20 a month.

17. In conclusion, I am particularly proud of the contents
page of my magazine, as I feel I was creative and didn’t
rely on the conventions of the majority of magazines,
unlike my front cover and double page, which I feel are
replicates of other magazines. If I were to recreate my
magazine pages I would have maybe moved away from
the traditional conventions of most magazines as I feel
that I was limited with my creativity as most modern
magazines are moving away from traditional conventions
to appeal to a new audience. Furthermore, I am not sure
whether I would create another physical magazine as I
feel magazine’s are a dying form of media, as most new
forms of media are digital. With a dramatic improvement
in technology in recent years there will be a less of a
demand for physical magazines and books, so creating
an online version of the magazine or interactive app may
be more effective and would appeal to a newer
generation.