Liam De Costa completed a foundation portfolio in media studies over several months. He created a magazine concept and cover, contents page, double page spread, and blog documenting his process. Liam learned photography, design, and editing skills in Photoshop. He met deadlines, incorporated feedback, and reflected on his research and design decisions. The portfolio improved Liam's technical skills and knowledge of magazine design conventions.

1. St. Paul’s Catholic College 64770
Candidate Name: Liam De Costa
Candidate Number: 6146
Unit G321: Foundation Portfolio in Media Studies
Schedule
Week Beginning Work Completed
Summer Holidays
Monday 9th September Introduction to Unit G321 and Unit G322. Created blog and
introduced to the foundation portfolio in media.
Analysed the codes and conventions of the front cover of VIBE.
Looked at past exemplar work to gain inspiration and ideas.
Reviewed different shot types.
Monday 16th September Introduced to Katz, Hartley’s and Maslow’s theory.
Created a target audience analysis of our sub-genre
Monday 23rd September Continued with issues with media ownership, having a look at

2. co-production deals and how it affects the individual studios.
Briefly shown basic techniques in Photoshop
Survey monkey sent out and 6 responses received (25th)
Started the creation of our preliminary task in Photoshop
Monday 30th September Travelled to London to have an academy class in Photoshop,
adding new skills of photo manipulation to my knowledge. (3rd
October, The Academy Class, Tony Harmer)
Gathered results from survey monkey and questionnaire
Monday 7th October I was able to meet the deadline of finishing the preliminary front
cover (9th)
Added changes to preliminary cover noted by my teacher.
Monday 14th October Learned another case study (A field in England) involved with
VOD
Planned contents page for preliminary task
Started work on contents page of preliminary task using my plan
however I need to take more photos to relate to cover stories
inside.
Monday 21st October I have completed my Contents page of my preliminary task and
have met the deadline of finishing all documents and updated my
logbook to date.
This task has improved my skills in Photoshop and added to my
knowledge of how magazines are designed.
DO NOT REINVENT THE WHEEL

3. Half Term
Monday 4th November Learnt about cross-media convergence and examples in current
media.
Started planning the front cover of my magazine, by
brainstorming ideas for my masthead. I thought up my masthead
from a song currently in the charts. “TKO – Justin Timberlake”
I have planned my front cover on a whiteboard using a similar
layout to “XXL magazine” that I will need to transfer to paper.
Monday 11th November Started work on main task front cover by placing a few
conventions on the page. I need to take some photos for my main
image by next lesson.
Continued work on the front page by including the main headline
and have chose to use myself as the anchoring main artist.
Monday 18th November I have completed my front cover 2 days before deadline and now
am just completing work on my blog page and log book.
Monday 25th November I have started work on my contents page for my main task using
my completed hand drawn draft. By using resources such as
‘XXL’ magazine and last year’s work, I am ensuring that my
contents page will look similar to existing layouts to reduce the
chance of it failing.
I have completed my editorial in word however I haven’t taken a
photo of someone for my editor picture as I am the cover artist in

4. my magazine. I decided not to place my editorial into the page
yet as I want to manipulate the text around my editor image. I
now need to start getting pictures for my contents page as the
layout is now set for me to start inputting my content.
Monday 2nd December I have placed in my cover story image into my contents page and
manipulated it to fit into the page. I now need to get a cover line
image for my contents bar.
Monday 9th December I have placed an image for one of my cover lines into my contents
page and have now completed the document.
Monday 16th December I have received my corrections and have started to make changes
to my contents page. Over the Christmas holidays I will need to
write up my questions and answers for my double page spread.
Christmas Holidays
Monday 6th January I have completed my hand drawn draft of my double page spread
influenced by many different issues of ‘XXL’ magazine. We have
also begun work on Section B of the exam, looking into the three
codes: verbal, technical, non-verbal.
I have made a start on my double page by placing my images and
manipulating them to fit into my page layout. I have duplicated
over my masthead and banners from my contents. I will continue
on creating this double page by manipulating text around one of
the images. Feedback I have received involve keeping the main
image black and white as it consists of the same colour scheme

5. as my front cover.
Monday 10th February This week I have concentrated on my blog page in making sure
that the slidesharepowerpoints are linked and images of my
work are added.
Also I have continued to make my finalized improvements to my
main task production work.
Half term
Monday 24th February We looked at the expectations for the evaluation and I received
feedback on what I need to include within my powerpoints to
earn more marks.
I added comments to my log book explaining why I chose to
research Q magazine and included an introduction and
conclusion.
I also added reflection comments on my survey monkey results.
I added reflection notes to my questionnaire results and also
uploaded my sketches to the blog page; accompanied by
comments and why I made the decisions that I did.
Over the weekend I need to have completed question 1 of the
evaluation.
Monday 3rd March Today I have continued to work on completing my blog page.
I have continued to add evidence of planning and research and
hand drawn drafts to my blog page with reflection comments.
Monday 17th March Continued work on evaluation
Monday 24th March Completed evaluation and uploaded to Prezi to be placed on the

6. blog page.