Schedule

Week Commencing 9th January 2012 - This week, I have set up my blog and played around with the styles and layouts of the pages that I created. At first, it was slightly confusing on how to use Blogger but with a lot of practise I soon figured it out. As well as this I have updated my home page, written my brief on my brief page and edited my self profile where I have written a slight introduction to myself.

Week Commencing 16th January 2012 - During this week I started to do some magazine research into conventions of magazines, this included looking at exisiting front covers, contents pages and double page spread's. This was useful as it allowed me to establish which conventions were commonly used in magazines and as a result of this I was able to use them in my own. I also started to create some magazine flat plans for desigining my magazines. These can be found on my planning pages.

Week Commencing 23rd January 2012 - This week involved continuing my flat plans and shot plans to get a feel for the layout of my magazine.

Week Commencing 30th January 2012 - This week I decided which magazine draft to properly use, after this I experimented with different colours for my house style etc.

Week Commencing 6th February 2012 - During this week, I started my prelim task construction. I took my photo's for this magazine and used photoshop and publisher to create my front cover and contents page. The prelim task took me longer than I expected to construct as it was the first time I had used photoshop and henceforth, I encountered some difficulties using it. After the construction was finished, I uploaded my prelim onto Blogger and used various programmes to create a presentation to tell my audience what I'd done, what I included and why I included these.

Week Commencing 13th February 2012 - Continued research and comparisons against real magazines, seeing what conventions were similar and different in each magazine.

Week Commencing 20th February 2012 - This week I started to construct my magazine by putting some copy on my front page, contents page and I also wrote a draft of the article for my DPS.

Weekend 3rd - 4th March 2012 - This weekend is when I took the photos to be included on my magazine. I had my images planned in my head and they pretty much went fully to plan. I took my photos in Newcastle City around 1-2 o'clock so that the images contained natural light. I used a hand held light, a tripod and a camera for these images.

10th March 2012 - Unfortunately, once I had uploaded my pictures onto the computer, the photos I had taken did not meet my requirements. They were out of focus and some were slightly blurred. As a result I retook my photos on this day in the same place and same time as the previous photoshoot. I am glad that I retook my photos as I was much happier with the style of the second lot, they were a lot more professional and I had learnt significantly and made a lot of progress from the first photoshoot.

Week Commencing 12th March 2012 - This week I have uploaded my still image originals onto my blog, I have also inserted my main front cover image onto the page and edited it slightly so that the text fits around the model and frames his pose. I had to edit my page quite a lot because I did not judge the space of the text very well and had to vary the sizes of fonts etc. to fit better on my page and give a more professional effect.

Week Commencing 19th March 2012 - This week I carried on with the construction of my magazine, slowly improving my photoshop skills as I go.

Week Commencing 2nd April 2012 - The next two weeks are the Easter holidays and in this time I have finished my construction. I have also began to start my evaluation, my evaluation has taken a longer time than I expected as I did not realise how much detail was required in my answers. I have used programmes such as Flickr, Prezi and Slideshare to help with my evaluation as well as demonstrating my ICT skills.

Week Commencing 16th April 2012 - The holiday's have finished and I am still continuing to work on my Evaluation now we are back in school, continuing as I had before with the required detail and various programmes being used.

Week Commencing 23rd April 2012 - This week I am nearing the final stages of my evaluation, I have recieved my construction feedback and there is only a few small changes to make to my product to improve.

Week Commencing 30th April 2012 - This is the final week that I am allowed on my coursework, the only thing I have to do this week is double check my blog to ensure everything on it is up to standard and also I need to work on my construction feedback of my product and after this, I will be finished my coursework process.