1. Reflective diary
WEEK 1:
Wednesday morning was the first day of my production I had started this off by opening up
photoshop to create my fanzine page designs therefore I chose my front cover because I
wouldn’t need my articles yet and I chose to complete my front cover and back cover on the
same pages split into two. I have also decided at the end of each day that I will take one
screenshot to track my progress using this diary this was my outcome on Monday after a full
day of production I didn’t like this outcome and I wasn’t happy with
it because I had rushed my illustration images of these two women
as I tried to complete these fast to move onto my back cover I also
was unsure on my text and fonts because it looks very basic and the
‘&’ looked out of place, lastly my colour schemes didn’t mix well
together and I felt everything was everywhere and I want my front
cover to be very minimalistic. However, I did like the outcome of the
facial features of the illustrations because they look realistic and
worked well without adding other facial features e.g., eyes. I did
then decide I would use this theme throughout the whole of my
fanzine because I like to link in each theme so then my fanzine is put
together professionally. To create my illustrations, I used the
polygonal lasso tool and found an existing image from the internet
to then place these on two different layers and draw around the
image (I did change this up a bit, so my outcomes wasn’t the same
to the images) and then pressed via copy and used the blending options + colour overlay
and picked the colour schemes I wanted. Overall, I wasn’t confident with my outcome by
the end of Wednesday in my last lesson so I knew there was room for improvement, and I
would figure this out for Thursday’s lesson. Moving onto Thursday’s lesson I had decided
that I didn’t like my illustrations because they looked very rushed and like I hadn’t put as
much effort in as I wanted to therefore, I decided to continue the same process and
complete another illustration shown below this is something which went well because it
looked a lot more realistic and stood out to me a lot more as something
which would firstly appeal towards my audience but also something you
would see in a women’s fanzine with this one I did only struggle with placing
it all together because I struggled with matching
up the neck and the hair when drawing round
the image so it did take a few attempts to get it
how I liked it. I also was still unsure what colour
scheme I wanted my background to have and
kept changing this each time to match with my
images. I also added 3 social media icons which
was twitter, tik tok and Facebook to link in with one of the
themes to my magazine this turned out well and took up space
where there are gaps on the front page these were also simple
2. to make as I had used the polygonal lasso tool which I began to get the
hang of at this point and I had also used this exact tool in my experiments
which was my planning before I moved onto my production. By the end of
Thursdays lesson, I had managed to change my whole front cover with a
new illustration image and had decided I wanted to add a few more ones
like this instead of close ups beforehand with
(Wednesday’s outcome). Moving onto Fridays lesson
at this point I still needed to finish off my front cover,
so I began by adding in two more illustrations to put
at the bottom of my page I managed to get through
these quick which was a success because of the
practice I had beforehand, and I really liked my
outcome of these it was a huge improvement for me
to the start of my production. I then changed around
the social media apps in sizes and added three
smaller circles to give the effect that one of the
women is thinking about social media 24/7 and it
also indicates that this fanzine will also include some
social media sections. A weakness for my font cover
was my title because I did originally have and
included but I realised it left a gap between the title and didn’t look right
therefore I decided to add ‘&’ with the photoshop text and used the
opacity tool to add this behind the text. I liked this outcome because it
looked a lot more professional and made my title stand out that little extra
I did then move onto my back cover which I wanted to keep simple and
not too overcrowded to match with my front cover these were fonts I had
kept the same and added socials in I managed to get my back cover done in a short amount
of time. After this I did decide to change my background colours to a gradient mix, I do like
this outcome however I am now unsure with my background as I need to match the colours
schemes somehow on my two-page spreads and other pages. Therefore, this is something I
will focus on next week and began to create other pages for my fanzine.
WEEK 2:
Starting on Wednesday as my second week into production I decided to
move on from my front cover and back page because if need be I can
always come back to those in my final week, therefore I started to create
two more pages in today’s lessons I chose to start the hashtag pages which
I talked over in my planning (pages) and I wanted to create one big hashtag
with a range of hashtags surrounding them the meaning behind this is to
get my audience involved so I began by using Da Font to collect together all
my fonts I used typewrite font for m y hashtags because this looked well
together and I also chose 3 colour schemes for his page which was black,
3. purple and white which all looks good together. A weakness in today’s lesson was sorting
the layouts out with all of the hashtags because I didn’t know which looked good where or
matched together well, I also began creating two separate pages in A5 instead of creating an
A4 page and splitting this into two therefore I went back and change this which was time
consuming but I managed to get this transferred.to finish off my pages I duplicated the large
hashtag and added a couple into the background with a low opacity however when I now
look back on this image I can’t really see much outline of these so I will look back on this in
tomorrow’s lesson. Overall, I am happy with
this two-page outcome, and I will still look for
more improvements as I go on and I will also
move onto my next pages within my fanzine as
I am also happy, I managed to complete two
pages in one day whereas in my first week it
took me 3 days to create 2 pages, so this is a
great improvement with my time schedule.
Moving onto Thursdays lesson I began the
mornin g by opening up photoshop and
creating an A4 page landscape print page for a
double page spread which I chose the one
relating towards social media. I was really
happy with my first page (left side) because I created another illusttraion which was a phone
these turned out well and I also used a font which I had
matched together with the other two page spread that I had
created yesterday. I also then decided on a gradient
background with a pink colour scheme and began to type up
my article for this page,however this is the main part which I
struggled with finding the right information and putting this all
together as I wanted to make sure things in the article made
sense and would appeal to my audience (that they will find
intresting). I did type a draft out which had taken me till last
lesson therefore I will still be working on this in tomorrows
lesson because I feel like I need to add more and also then sort
out the layout of the paragraphs.Fridays lesson whch is the last
lesson of the week before half term I chose to continue with
my two page scoial media spread which included sorting the
layouts of my article and also look back on my article to double
check with spellikng mistakes and that
everythiung I had wrote fitted in well
together and appealed towards mhy
audience. This was very time
consuming and in Fridays lessosn my
first to lessons was tutorial and catching up with other projects so I
did have as much time to move onto my other pages I also then
looked at background colours to match with other pages and I was
4. really happy with my outcome however I spent abit too much time on perfecting the page
therefore will mean I have m ore to complete over half term which will be my next week of
production.
HALF TERM:
half term of production I decided today would be the best day
to get my interview out of the way therefore when I come
back into college I can complete these two pages for my
interview page as I do not have photoshop on my laptop which
has made this a lot harder for me. I did conduct my interview
over text with my mangager at work as she is the m anager of
a shop which includes clothing fashion pieces and is also on
social media wesbites etc.i was really happy with the interview
because I knew she would give a lot of detailed responses
which I was looking for the interview wasn’t too long aswell
which was great because then I had time to look back and
write up the interview,however conducting my interview over text can be
difficult because you could miss specefic
points out that my interviewer hasn’t
mentioned over text but I preferred this rather
than having to write up my interview in
person which I did
for my
experiments and I
struggled to keep
up so this was a
postivie for
myself.on
Thursday I
wanted to begin
to look for improvments within my planning
work which I had gotten feeback before half
term so I began to tick these of the list firstly I
looked back on my factual proposal and made a
lot of improvments with the production
schedule plan specefic tasks tabel I added a lot
more detail and was a lot more specefic to
excatly understand what I would focus on and
which dates and weeks this was a lot more
helpful for me. I also managed to begin my interview which went relly well and I had wrote
up the whole thing which is shown below so I then have my interview ready to type up on
my other pages included in the fanzine.the last part of catching up which I focused on over
5. half term was my planning which I looked back on and decided to add more in such as
contingency plan and health and saftey because I wanted to add in more detail and have
potential issues and solutuions incase I need these.
WEEK 3:
Wednesday, of week three returning back from half term I
began by finishing off my interview pages and continued
using photoshop to create all my pages I decided on an
illustration which is similar to who I was interviewing and
then wrote the interview beforehand on word so I could
just copy this over which was a lot more easier for me.
Another thing that went well was I wanted to add text
which was included in the interview at the top in bold so
therfore my audience would get a hint on what the
interview reveals which turned out well and I really like the
outcome of. However the main thing which was a struggle
was fitting all of my interview onto the page as I didn’t want
it to look too overcrowded because then my audience may
not read all opf the text and get bored quick so I did try to
create as many bigger gaps as I possibly could to create
space.i did only mangae to creat these two pages in this
lesso which I wasn’t very happy about with the time I have
left with the p[roject so I was hoping in the next lessons I
would try achieve to get more complete.moving onto
both my Thursday and Fridays lessons which I focused on
getting two illustartion images onto two pages and then
com pleteting two articles to add in the pages however, I
did just get the illustartyions complete because I chosr to
spend a lot of my time on these to make sure I liked the
outcomes which in the end I did I carried on with the
similar themese for my pages to match which turned out
well and the sort of looks I was going for I did achieve
with the poses and styles on the illustartions. Yet again
with my timing was my let down because I did want to
6. have an early strat with my evaluation but didn’t manage to start on the two articles which I
had left in my next lesson thee focus for my project is completeting two articles and getting
those onto my page layouts and putting all of my 12 pages together.
WEEK 4:
LAST WEEK OF PRODUCTION
In Wednesdays lesson I continued with my final two pages as this was my last week of
production and wanted to make sure I left the last week for evaluation so I had a lot of time
to focus on that PowerPoint I chose to type up my model article for starters and I did
struggle with the articles because putting together an article that will appeal to my audience
type was tricky because I felt some of it didn’t go well together or make much sense. I used
word document to type this up and once I
felt I had gotten everything I needed down I
then went back through it and checked for
slight errors or checked it sounded good
and then uploaded this to my page. I got
this onto the page fine and they layout was
how I wanted which was a benefit to my
work and I didn’t have to tweak this at all,
all I did was add a few spaced paragraphs
therefore it looked like there was less
words for my audience to read when they
look at this page. After this I added a few
bits of text behind my main text and used
the opacity tool to make the words look a
lot lighter which I think looked good because it makes my text stand out a lot more with my
background aswell.at the end of the lesson I did manage to complete this page which I was
really happy with and I liked my outcome I did also struggle at the end with the text on the
left side of the page because I couldn’t fully fit it onto the model but I did make it work.
Thursday’s lesson was when I began my last
page of my fanzine and I started by
completing the article to get this out of the
way I searched for information with body
positivity and put together facts and ways
social media effects this which I found easy
and when I put this onto my page, I realised I
didn’t have much text down and half of my
page was just blank which I didn’t like.
Therefore, I did come up with an extra plan
which I did ask my sister on how she
overcome this subject as it is something
7. which she relates to so I asked her a couple questions and she gave back a response which I
then included on my page which turned out good because my audience can relate to this
and help them. This did lead over into Friday’s lesson as I had to go home and get the
response from my sister and on Fridays lesson I added this in with a picture of her and then
also used the skill from my other page to link it together of adding text with a low opacity.by
the end of Fridays lesson I had managed to finish this page of and I added this to flip snack
on a flipbook to display the fanzine which is shown below:
https://www.flipsnack.com/jessicasfanzinecom/new-flipbook.html
overall, I am really impressed with my outcome of my fanzine, and I am glad it links in with
all of my planning work and experiments which is what I was aiming for and I am happy with
every page I created in next week’s lesson I will move onto my evaluation and write about
my achievements and what went well or improvements I can make.