Evaluation Question 7Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Preliminary Task Outline

• My first task was to create a magazine cover and contents page for my school. The purpose of the magazine was to inform the pupils, staff & parents about the things that were taking place in school in the upcoming week. This task allowed me to learn how to use some of the tools and work my way around Adobe Photoshop, this benefitted me for when it came to using this programme to make my final piece. I have made great progress since my preliminary task and learnt more about Photoshop in order to make sure my final products are better than this original task.

Preliminary Task

Progression

School Magazine

When I started this task and began making my magazine, I had to quickly get used to using Photoshop as I wasn’t really familiar with the way it works. I had to learn how to do basic movements and creations in order for me to start this task. I learnt how to add layers, use text, manipulate images and arrange the layers. It was fairly simple developing my skills in those areas. I still had a basic understanding of the programme and magazine conventions, therefore, looking at the magazine now I can really see my progress in comparison to my final products. I think my magazine stuck to the house style and appeals to the target audience of pupils, it also links with the school logo. However, if I was to re-do the house style, I wouldn’t have a gradient background for my contents page as I don’t think it looks very professional now that I know how to make a professional looking magazine page. I think I used too many fonts on the front cover and they didn’t really compliment each other. For example, the masthead font is quite fancy, and the bottom footer font is quite basic. I think that the front cover image looks good. However, I used the blur tool on Photoshop to fade the top of the photo out and I think I could have paid more attention to that to make it look better. I feel like at this stage, I didn’t have the skills to accurately blur out part of the image. I also think my contents page is basic and doesn’t follow the conventions of a magazine. I think the images look like they have just been pasted in and nothing has been done to them. I also think this wouldn’t appeal to my target audience as nothing is really eye-grabbing.

How have I improved from my Preliminary Task to my Final Piece?

Improving on my basic Photoshop skills have allowed me to ensure that my final product’s are of a much higher quality, professional standard and fit the typical magazine conventions. Building my skills over time and looking back at this work has given me the opportunity to understand what is needed to create a magazine following the typical conventions and what is needed in terms of content and layout. When I began using Photoshop, I could only use basic cutting out skills like cropping, over the course I have improved my skills using other tools such as lasso, magic wand, quick selection and magnetic lasso which helped me when it came to cutting out images from backgrounds or trying to manipulate the image. Another skill that I have improved over this duration is the effects you can put on text. At the beginning, I only really knew how to use the drop shadow effect correctly and now I have learnt how to use other effects such as stroke, bevel and emboss and inner shadow to all improve the appearance of my work. I followed magazine conventions in my front cover by making sure I had small details like the barcode, price, date and website which all improves the professionalism of my magazine. I again followed the conventions of a music contents page by using shapes in a way to cut sections in the page, I think this attracts the audience towards the text. I also have learnt that it is important to appeal to a wider audience, in my preliminary I just tried to attract the pupil audience, in this piece I have tried to attract rap music fans as well as others, I’ve also tried to range it from the age of 16-25 to allow my content to be varied.