A blog dedicated to my work on the BA(Hons) Journalism degree course at University College Falmouth
Saturday, 20 November 2010
News and Magazine production Week Seven
Often in a group situation I seem to naturally take a leadership position, and while this isn't a bad thing I don't think my interaction skills people are as good as they could, or should be. I am not very good at being diplomatic, and while I feel I have improved a lot since starting at university, on this project I was hoping that I would be able to sit back and just complete my areas of the project and not worry as much about the over all picture. However, sadly several members of the group have not put as much effort into the project as the rest of us and as a consequence I've found myself doing what I didn't want to have to do, and that is in a sense Marshall a few of the other guys to get them to work. I understand that we are marked individually, but I in a group situation I always believe in the team and try my best not just to do well for myself, but for the rest of the group. The dilemma I see myself in is should I ignore what comes naturally? The desire to lead and try and help people who are falling behind to do better, or to throw those feelings aside and just work for myself and my own mark?.
On the plus side there are some really talented people in this group, half of them turn up on a regular basis, but It is becoming asyemterical in terms of work load. Julian for example, has taken on a higher workload than anyone because he designed the cover, and is also working on an extra feature to fill the gap that other members have left void because that have not done anywork. I also feel that the group has left Julian down because he put himself out there to get the magazine printed thanks to his family contacts but they group cannot even provide a fixed number of pages because we don't know how many we are going to have due to not knowing who will actually have work finished on Tuesday.
I am hoping that the entire group, the whole roster will be there on Tuesday with finished features and we can get to the production stage. The people who were there this week decided that the deadline for work to be submitted would be the following Tuesday, and that if they don't have completed work by then it would not be going in the magazine.
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
News and Magazine production Week Six
Saturday, 6 November 2010
News and Magazine production Week Five
This week I handed my feature piece in. I am glad to report that I was actually ahead of schedule. My piece was accepted and praised although I was asked to make a few changes. It also is being let down by the lack of more than one original source but, I am confident I can gather some more quotes before the deadline. I was advised to move one section of the text to a higher [position in the document to allow for better flow and I have done so, as well as streamlining the opening section. I’ve since abandoned my “first person” perspective that led into the article.
In this week’s learning session we worked on Adobe In design which didn’t go very well since all the machines had problems, however we did pick up some good tips from the board.
Some In Design essential steps.
· On opening the page make sure “facing pages” is ticked.
· Make sure you allow the correct page size
· Number of columns
· Open ‘More options’ To size up the margins and to allow a bleed area which will be essential when we come to print.
· ‘Space CTRL’ Allows ‘zoom’ on page
· Open window pages (F12) where you can view your master pages
· You can now draw a text box.
· Three types of copy (TBD) Body copy/Captions/Headline – In a magazine, set the character styles to AUTO FORMAT, for example Ariel 10pt
· Be aware of the bleed when adding images
· Textures available from CG Textures