Shakeira Darbyshire reflects on their skills development project creating a magazine front cover in Photoshop. They identify strengths like the striking main image but note weaknesses such as a bright hand drawing attention from the face. While coming up with intriguing cover lines was easy, taking the main photo and sizing the masthead proved difficult. The main tools used were the text and move tools for constantly adding and arranging elements. Overall, Shakeira found Photoshop less difficult the second time using it for this project compared to their initial front cover attempt.

1. Skills Development
Front Cover
Shakeira Darbyshire

2. What are the strengths and weaknesses of
your production work?
• A strength of my front cover is that my main image is striking and has direct address which both
feature on a professional magazine cover. Also on my main image, the person is showing multiple
indicators of pop punk genre which shows the whole cover as a pop punk magazine. A weakness
is that the person's hand is very bright which could have been reduced so the attention wasn't
taken away for their face. Another weakness is that there is a large gap in the bottom left hand
corner which could have been filled with another cover line so that it doesn't look empty.

3. What did you find easy and what did you find
difficult?
• I found that coming up with cover lines to put on my front cover, that would be intriguing for the
audience, quite easy. I also found that importing images onto photoshop and making them the
right size was easy too.
• I found taking the image for my front cover very difficult because I had to get the correct angle,
lighting, facial and hand expression and fit in musical iconography. I also found making the
masthead the right size and font quite difficult because it had to be eye catching and fit into the
pop punk genre.

4. What were the main tools you used in
photoshop and why?
• The main tools I used in photoshop were the text tool and the moving tool. This was because I
had to constantly add text to my front cover and rearrange images and other text around to fit
the page.

5. How does your use of photoshop compare to
the preliminary front cover you produced?
• Compared to the first time I used photoshop I found the second time I was less limited to what
tools I could use. I also found that it was less difficult to use the second time around because I
was familiar with how to import images and edit layers.