Evaluation Question 7

What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from creating the school magazine (preliminary task) to creating your music magazine?

To begin, below are the images of my preliminary task alongside of my main task:

FRONT COVER

CONTENTS PAGE

DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD

Prior to creating my preliminary task front cover and contents page I created two very basic flat plans. Following this, I used a digital camera and went around the College taking various unplanned photos which I felt I could use. Then, I began constructing my front cover and contents page using Microsoft Publisher. I made up the coverlines, list of contents and editors letter as I created the magazine and had no prior planning of the text which appears on it.

Creating this preliminary task gave me an idea of what I wanted the general layout of my magazine for my main task to be, however, apart from this I believe this is of low quality and appears as very amateur. For example, the masthead almost illegible due to the background image and there is a large gap beneath the list of contents.

In total, I only spent around four hours or less on the whole planning and constructing process of my preliminary task.

From this I learnt that time management and planning would be vitally important in constructing a high quality main task. Deconstructing existing magazine front covers, contents pages and double page spreads allowed me to identify existing conventions to apply to my magazine in order to make it appear as professional. Although I was aware of the key features of a magazine cover prior to creating my College magazine, I was not aware of recurring conventions and so this was an element I learnt in my progress from the preliminary task to main task.

I became aware that in order for my magazine to be a success it had to be appropriate for my target audience and as a result I used the results gathered from my questionnaire created on SurveyMonkey throughout the creation of my magazine. For example, due to the question shown below I priced my magazine at £2.50:

However, during the process of creating my College magazine I gathered no information on what College students would like to see within the magazine and I believe that is why I struggled in creating a list of contents and left a blank space beneath.

Furthermore, I took a lot more care and spent a great deal more time creating the flat plans for my main task compared to those I created for the preliminary task and constructed a detailed written rationale. Due to this, I was able to take photographs and pick fonts accordingly.

Taking photographs for my main task was a completely different process to that carried out for my preliminary task. I completed an in depth photoshoot plan prior to taking the photos in order to ensure that those I gathered were appropriate for the genre and target audience of my magazine.

To conclude, in the progression from creating my preliminary task to creating my music magazine I have learnt the importance of planning and time management. Every element of my magazine, from the colour scheme to photographs, fonts and the article itself had been considered and planned in detail before I added them to my Photoshop document. I have also learnt a lot about using Photoshop itself as prior to creating my music magazine I had not used this software before. I practiced and developed my skills prior to beginning the magazine itself and by the time my magazine was underway I was confident in using multiple tools from the magic wand to adding a gradient background. I also learnt how photographs are an extremely important part of magazines and therefore used a high quality SLR camera for my main task as opposed to the digital camera used for my preliminary task. Fonts change the whole aesthetics of a magazine and this became even more evident when I used simple fonts such as Arial and Bradley Hand ITC on my College magazine. This was an error I learnt from and as a result used the website DaFont in order to find appropriate fonts for my music magazine. Throughout the creation of my magazine I ensured that every element I added was appropriate for my target audience of teenagers to young adults and appropriate for my genre of R&B/Pop and general Chart music.