7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt from the progression

of it to the full product?

Stages in making magazine

• Research-Audience, Market

• Planning- Pitch, style sheets, photography plans, flat plans, draft layouts

• Pre Production-Taking images

• Production- Image manipulation, text manipulation, layout manipulation

ResearchIn my preliminary task of the front cover for the College, I feel that my skills have developed a lot. For that task we had to do no planning, which made it difficult as we were unsure what to include on the magazine front cover. As we did no planning we knew little about common conventions, and colour schemes etc. so our college front covers weren’t very developed. So I have learnt that planning is an essential to making the magazine.

We researched many of the publishers for magazines so we learnt what magazines were owned by what publishers. I found this very interesting and helpful as it helped us to find out what types of magazines get published and by whom. This then helped me develop my magazine so that it would get published and distributed.

I knew for my preliminary task that the audience would be around 16- 19 year olds, so I didn’t have to do any research or research any competitive magazines. I have definetly developed from then as I have learnt to carry out audience research, market research, a survey and a interview.

We did in depth analysis of 3 front covers, double page spread and contents pages, this was very helpful as it helped us learn the common conventions of magazines eg the masthead at the top of the page. It also helped us develop are skills at the mise en scene of the image which then helped us when we were creating our own magazines.

Print screens of some of the research I did:

PlanningAs I didn’t plan anything for my preliminary task, I have learnt a lot through the planning stage. I have learnt that planning is a essential, as it makes it easier to manage your time, and to know what you are doing next with the magazine.

I did a pitch, this was very important as it allowed me to write down in detail what the

genre of my magazine will be. The price, the release date, and the audience etc. This was good as then I had my basis of my magazine that I could them work up from. From this pitch I then presented a similar pitch to my peers, and got feedback from then. This then allowed me to do more planning from what they had said.

I carried out a style sheet. I think this was very beneficial and it taught me to expreriment with colours to see which looks good and what works. I did lots of different shades of colours, so I got the exact colour that I wanted. I also tried out different fonts that I could use, and I got a mood board of existing images to help me see what kind of shot and image I want for my front cover.

The final font that I did use was not included on my style sheet, but my style sheet helped me learn what kind of font that I wanted. When it came to production and text manipulation I went on da-font website and found the font that I wanted.

My simplistic coour scheme of white, maroon and black were chose on my style sheet, which shows style sheets are effective and useful.

I carried out draft page layouts and photography plans. They were very useful and effective as it saved me time planning it once I had taken the pictures etc. However, some of my images are different to what I had planned in my photography plans. This is because when I was taking the photos ones that I had planned hadn’t worked out as effectively as I thought, so I changed them to make the magazine work.

These are very similar! Showing plans are effective. My plans are not in colour because I hadn’t decided my colour scheme then,

This shows that my photography plans haven’t been affective, as I changed the shot.

Production

This is the aesthetics of the magazine. - making things look attractive, through manipulation.For my preliminary task and the main production I used photo-shop. The first time I had ever used it was for the college magazine. I feel like I have learnt a lot about photo-shop, and that helped me get a better end result. This is obvious from my end results. Photo-shop is the best photo editor there is to use so I used it to get a high quality result.

I went on da-font.com to get texts that were attractive and what I wanted, and I learnt how to download them to photoshop. There is a large variety of fonts to choose so it helped make my magazine look individual and original.

Preliminary to Final As you can see my skills in photo-shop have developed through out the project. Out of my front cover, double page spread and my contents page I am most unhappy with my front cover.It is a lot more developed than my preliminary task. I had edited more of the image for a more effective and professional look. Unlike the college magazine I have made sure that the text doesn’t cover the models face, as that is unprofessional and unattractive.

I have also stuck to one main colour instead of two- ‘blue and red’ and I learnt that it looks more professional and stylish. I have kept the obvious conventions the same such as masthead at the top, and bar code and price at the bottom left. I have also kept a simplistic plain background.However, I still think that my front cover would have been better if the background wasn’t so minimalistic in plain white, as I think it makes my front cover look slightly immature. Other than that I have learnt a lot about photo-shop and what looks good and effective.

My preliminary task contents page was very rushed and looked unprofessional and amateur. I have changed everything for my real contents page, and have resulted in a contents page that looks like it could be from a real magazine. The only thing I kept the same was the use of a matching colour scheme. The colour scheme of blue and red was eye catching and teenagers would probably find it attractive. I changed it to maroon as young adults would find that colour attractive.

I learnt a lot about the layout of magazines. The preliminary task contents page is very simplistic and boring, but I changed it so there is lot of eye catching images, and the features titles are bold and easy to read. I added a big banner across the bottom, full of the current number 1’s, appealing to the target audience.

I learnt about the image rotation tool, and slightly turned one image. This is appealing as it could connote to young adults wilder side, and their way or going against typical conventions.

I also learnt how to make my image black and white, which was different to all my other coloured images.