Q7.Looking back at your preliminary

task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full

product?

Introduction • For my preliminary task I created a front cover for a college magazine as well as

a mock up design for the contents page. During the process of this I did not do any prior research into magazine designs and what my audience would expect to see throughout my magazine. As a result of this I was unable to achieve I high quality product that would be appealing to my target audience.

• When moving onto my music magazine I was able to research into the genre and find out who my target audience is as well as what they would be expecting to see in my magazine. I was able to do this by looking at various magazine from the same genre and analyse there front covers, contents page and double page spread as this is what I was going to be creating.

• Another stage of my music magazine included planning. This consisted of making a pitch idea, creating layouts and plans, and decided where I was going to take image and how.

Planning

Throughout making my music magazine, I have learnt that planning is an important part to make sure the magazine is at a high quality and looks like professional.For example planning the photos that I was going to use for certain parts of the magazine is important so that you can design the layout of the whole page. You will also have a clear idea of what you will need the model to wear or look like. To help me think of the photos I could put in my magazine I looked at the style of photography that other magazines have used as well as finding images from google to create an image of what I wanted my images to be like.

For my college magazine I had not planed what my front cover was going to look like which made it look unprofessional and I did not keep to the convention of a typical magazine image, this is a medium shot that fills the page.

Photography

For my college magazine I did not plan my photography. Not planning my photography meant that I did not take a high quality image that would be suitable for a magazine front cover.

When doing the photography work for my college magazine I decided to use a medium shot which is a convention of a magazine. However there is a lot of space at the top of the image making the subject look very small on the front cover when it needs to be standing out on the page. While taking this image I didn't use a suitable background. If I had done some research on this I would have realised that a background that isn’t plain and has a lot of colour will distract the viewers attention from the main subject.

Before doing the shoot for my music magazine planned and researched what I was going to do to get the best results. Throughout my research I was looking at the style of images that are used on a magazines and what makes them appealing for my target audience. When it came to planning I used to use someone that look like they would be an artist from this genre as well as thinking about there style of clothes. I also thought about the location. I decided on using the studio to take my image and used a white back ground allowing the subject the be seen clearly and it will sand out from the white back ground.

When I was using Photo Shop to improve my college magazine image I did not have a good understanding on how the different aspects of photo shop that would improve this image. For my music magazine I was able to take more time understanding how the levels and the spot healing tools work as well as other aspects that improve the overall look of the image. I had not previously used the levels before in photo shop and did not I have good understanding of it while improving this image on my college magazine. Also the spot healing tool is used to take away anything that you no longer want in the image this made the image look more professional and like a magazine front cover if I know how to use this tool on my first magazine image it will have given it a more professional look.

Photoshop:

I was able to create a professional looking image on my music magazine by learning the skills that I needed from sources such as YouTube and Google.

FontsWhile first designing my college magazine I didn’t take into consideration about the layout of where my text would go on the page. When I came to the editing process I found that I was limited to the amount of space that I would be able to put text into. To add to this I did not use a suitable font for both my masthead and the text around it, this made the text unclear as well as it not following the conventions of a masthead.

However when planning my music magazine I made sure that I was allowing enough space to have the amount of text that I am wanting to fill my page. I also spent time finding a suitable to font style for both my masthead and text. As a result of this I was able to create a front cover that looks professional and that would appeal to a wide range of readers.

Contents page

For my preliminary task I did a basic plan deciding on the layout of the text and images. As I started to plan the design of my new contents page I decided to further research the conventions as well a layouts that appeal to audiences. This design shows a different layout of images as well as deciding to have the text in columns rather then rows, I decided this from my research.

I also thought more about the text that has been used. In my preliminary task I kept the font simple and it did not fill up as much space. However in my second contents page I decided to try and find as a more unique and creative font design, as well as this I also made the decision to have it going across the top of the page. I feel this makes the page look fuller as well as it looking as if it is meant to be there.

Research:

Before I started making my magazine I researched different music magazine brands so that I could see what they front cover, contents page and double page spread looked like to get ideas on how to design mine. I was also able to find out the conventions that each magazine has and what each reader will expect to see. I had not done any research before starting my preliminary task so I had not looked at any magazines to get ideas. This means that it was very basic and did not look like a professional magazine and would not draw in the readers attention. I have learnt that if I had look at other magazine I would have been able to see the conventions such as the type of masthead, style of images, pull quotes and more and featured them on my front cover.