Final Design

For my final design, I chose to use my 'Karting Magazine' poster with me inside my kart. I thought that this made the most sense to use because it is both the most authentic and the best one to show about me and what I aimed for in my project, which is what I think I achieved. This was to represent my lifestyle. At the start, I aspired to make a poster that shows off my unique features such as, my hairstyle, the fact that I am a sporty person and lastly that I do Karting. 

This poster doesn't show my hair but it certainly shows the other two features. The best thing about it poster is that I have presented my passion for Karting. This is significant to me since I don't get to talk about it a lot since it is a very rare thing. I think that not only does this display my passion for Karting but it shows off my skills in photoshop. 

I created a banner around the writing so that you can actually see it since before this, there was no banner and that made it very hard for me to read it. After this, I created the title. It is simple, I used the Roman Times font because I thought (and still think) that is is bold and holds the title well in the way that it is quite elegant and looks sharp and slick. To create this effect on the dark to light fade in the letters of the title, I used the Burn and Dodge tool. I have experience with this tool and have always liked it. It can bring out the shape of the letters well at the same time as looking quite formidable. It shows off some of my skill too and I like that. 

Another feature I added was my signature. I bought this in because I made it in a way that it looked exclusive. I used a Wacom tablet because I tried using the mouse but it wasn't the same. It didn't seem very real because the edges were sharp and jagged. I wanted to make it more realistic and somehow handwrite it. Using the tablet, I was enabled to do so. I also used black as the main colour at the start and gave it red highlights afterwards since it looked quite plain and as good as it was it needed a bit more.

I made the price £3.90 because when I went to the shops to research the prices of magazines and took two examples. Them being £3.50, £4.50 I added them up to make 8 and divided that by two to make 4. My price should be £4 but I think that that could be a bit too much so I changed the price and made it cheaper by 10p.

One of the last things I did was me just needing something to go with the English flag so I put an icon for GR95 below the English flag and used the text effects (fx) on the text to create this fade from light to red to dark.

Lastly, I edited the image and made it brighter to adjust it to the tone of the other text and the tone of the magazine. It needed to stand out so made the blue and white brighter on my kart. I felt like it was needed since the whole tone was dark with all the dark fading I did and overall I think it works quite well. 

If I did this project again, I'd go with a football theme since I think that as good as it is to have karting and as unique as it is, I would like to spread more of my other passions knowing that I would have done this, otherwise I don't think I would have. The fact I already did this makes more sense to choose a different sport now but if I hadn't already done this I think I would have had a picture of me actually driving instead of sitting in front of the camera. I make me look like I'm not doing anything and I am conscious of that because I am constantly doing something so this wasn't the image I wanted to project.

Feedback

Positives:

- Image grabs attention
- Colours on kart pop
- Text stands out
- The karting vibe
- I like that ATTAQ is in it
- The English flag
 coming out from the helmet
- I like the title's colour and font
- It looks great and the font really works well with the main image. It's simple and not over the top

Negatives:

- Colours could be more vibrant
- Could take helmet off
- The " this month " because of it's white some of the words are hidden
- Your in the shade
- Fence
- Show your face 

I find this feedback information very helpful. To answer the negatives I will start by saying that the fence, I agree, it's a problem and if I were to disguise it I'd have to cover it with something. I tried using the signature but you couldn't perceive it on top of the fence. The main problem with the fence is that it is so bold so whatever goes on top of there must be bold in its self. I didn't want to do that because as others stated the kart pops so I don't want to break that. 
Again, the feedback is useful and I take that into regard but when it came to the explanation where it was stated that I "could take my helmet off" I think that I wanted to keep the "Karting vibe" to make my poster look more upon the style of 'ready to go'. This would allow the viewer to see what I look like in my karting mode, but this would be great in other terms of showing my unique hairstyle instead.