skill development essay

For my foundation portfolio I first of all started by producing the front page of a new college magazine featuring a photograph of a student in medium close up plus some appropriately laid out text and a masthead. Additionally I produced the layout of the contents page to demonstrate my grasp of dtp and Photoshop. This product represented my own college as it seemed more appropriate to do so. I researched other college magazines and their details so that I could get a good idea of how I should make my magazine I found out that most of these college magazines were free as students have a limited budget and would not want to spend money on this item. I then mocked up some primitive versions of how I think I should layout my magazine. This included a slideshow of my ideas about photography and what other images I should include in this brief magazine. I then began drafts of the front cover and contents page and once I was happy with them I also decided to produce a home page for the college website mentioned on the front of the cover. I then ran a questionnaire containing four questions about whether the magazine was easy to read, were the images relevant to the magazine and so on. The results that came back were quite positive but left me room for improvement. Then I started producing a music magazine which contained the front page, contents page and double page spread all the text was original and produced by myself and contained photographs taken by myself. I then analysed what it was I had to do and said what I was going to do. Since this was going to be a music magazine I stated what genre I was going to base it around in which case it was rock and metal, I used a prezi presentation to show examples of this kind of music and why I had chosen it. Then I analysed three different music magazines to identify the key conventions of what goes into a music magazine this helped me to understand how I can layout and design my own magazine. After I had analysed these magazine I researched my target audience and explained who I would be aiming my magazine at. Then I started to look at price and publishing and began producing initial drafts of how my magazine was going to be composed but also playing around with photography so that I could begin to assemble the magazine. After going through about 10 more drafts I had created my final draft which had become totally different from the first draft. Then I evaluated this magazine and compared it against a professional magazine highlighting where I went wrong and how I could improve. Before the as media course I had basic Photoshop skills form my graphic design lessons at my previous school  but this course improved upon them and helped me get to grips with the program. The course also helped to improve my writing and analysis skills which helped me to understand the project. I used these skills in the foundation portfolio to produce my magazine and explain how and why I used certain components of the magazine to make it look more professional. It also helped me improve my design skills as I now understand what I need to make things look more professional and higher quality. I used this skill to achieve a better standard of work. As I continued to make drafts in my foundation portfolio my skills progressed because I could see where I was going wrong and how I should fix it. But also which direction I needed to move the project in so that it could keep getting better which represents a move forward. In conclusion over the last year I have gathered new skills and achievements which have shown me where I have made mistakes and what I can do to fix them , but I have also improved drastically over the project because my skills have developed which helped me to get a betted outcome . To summarise my new skills, I have learned how to manipulate Photoshop to my advantage, how to explain in more detail what processes I am going through and how to improve upon my mistakes.