Evaluation Q7Looking back at your preliminary task, what do

you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Research and PlanningMy research and planning helped a lot in the progression and improvement from my preliminary task to the final draft of my music magazine. I believe that my research helped me recognise what I could have don’t to improve my preliminary task and create a more professional looking college magazine. Since I learned from doing my research how conventional magazines construct there layout and the conventions they use within the magazine, I was able to use my findings to influence what I included within my own magazine.There is also the fact that I have now had more experience with the various different software's available to improve my magazine such as Adobe Photoshop which I used frequently to enhance and improve the quality of my images used within the magazine. From my practice with them using these software's daily I was able to create a more professional looking music magazine from my preliminary task with improved quality of images, text and colour use.I also took more time to plan out what my music magazine was going to look like. This helped as I had more time to experiment with different layouts and to fully plan out what conventions and features I was going to include in my magazine.

AudienceI thought a lot more about my target audience when creating my music magazine, what would appeal to them and attract them? I believe this would make the magazine more professional and allow me to make progression from my preliminary task which I created with little knowledge of the target audience and what a variety of them would like to see in the college magazine. I was able to research and learn about my target audience by creating a questionnaire and handing it out for a selection of individuals within the target audience to fill in. I included questions such as ‘What type of music do you like listening to?’ as from these questions I found what the audience would like to see in the magazine and what I should include to make the magazine a success. I also carried out various peer assessments when completing a draft of my music magazine to see what the audience thought abou7t it giving me both compliments and constructive criticism of their own personal opinions on what I could do to make it more appealing to them. I believe this worked well as it has shown to have a massive positive effect on the progression from my preliminary task to the final draft of my music magazine.

Front CoversAs you can see I made various progression from my initial preliminary task front cover to my music magazine cover. Although they both had different proposes, they do however have similar target audiences (only difference being the music magazine is aimed at females where as the college magazine is aimed at mixed genders). You can see progression even from the text used. The heading in the college magazine is fairly dull and blends into the page, there is also the fact that the font style used on the masthead is also used across the whole page giving the cover no variation and therefore less entertaining for such a young target audience. I learned to vitiate my text after doing my research on other music magazines as I found that the most successful covers have a range of font styles and short catchy headings and sub headings rather than bulk text which is shown to be featured in my preliminary task. You can also see improvement with the images I have used and how my development with knowledge in various software's has helped improve the quality of my images and their impact on the page. I also believe that the main image I chose to use on my preliminary task is inappropriate for its purpose as it is of two subjects and only one of them are making eye contact with the camera lens in order to make an effect. Where as the image I used on my music magazine is of a single subject who is the most dominant aspect of the image (the only thing shown in the image after the background was edited out) and they are making eye contact with the camera lens.

Preliminary Task

Music Magazine

Contents PageYou can see how my developing knowledge of magazines and the various software's available to improve my work has had a serious impact on the progression of my magazine contents page, from the preliminary task to the final draft in my music magazine. For instance the layout. I was able to develop a more complex layout for my music magazine as I had more experience with the tools within the software's which I could use to create this layout. I chose to use a compact layout and was able to succeed with this by editing out the background of the main image and using text wrap so that the text bordered neatly around the main image. I also created a more professional and conventional looking title section of the page as I found from my research that various successful music magazines will include the date and a link to the company's website (including various medias) and a logo which is recognisable to the magazine and will allow synergy throughout the magazine as this logo will be shown frequently not only in the magazine but on anything which is linked to it, e.g. the website. However as you can see there is much less on the college magazine contents page and it looks a lot less professional, cluttered with various sub images and no clear layout. The text used also shows my progression from the preliminary task as since you can see on the college magazine I only included the basics with the article title and the corresponding numbers in which the article will be featured on. Where as in my music magazine I also added a summary of each of the articles featured to allow the audience to understand more on what the article is going to be about, in the aim to persuade them to read the article. I have also added sections and various colours and font sizes to both make the contents page look more appealing to the target audience but to also assist with the pages purpose in making it easier for them to navigate around the magazine. The images have also improved. I have been able to improve my images both with the original taking of them in a more planned out photo shoot where all of the features of the images were well thought out for the purpose. For instance the prop used and the pose of the model in my music magazine was all planned to represent her in a fun and child like way to connote a young essence to the image, where as in the preliminary task the poses and props were just convenient and done on the spot with no planning done at all this lead the images to be predictable and would not attract the audience to the page. The setting of the shoot also helped with the improvement of my images, since I had more time to plan, I also had more time to consider the best location for taking my images, when doing this I considered what would be the most appropriate background and best lighting for a professional looking image, this was also not done when taking photos for the preliminary task as they were taken on the day in the local college library. After my images were taken my improved knowledge of photo editing software's helped with the final touch ups and to make the image fit in well on the page. I mainly used Adobe Photoshop as it includes various tools which were helpful in editing my images the way I believed were needed.

Preliminary Task

Music Magazine

Overall

Overall I believe my progression from my preliminary task to the final draft of my Music Magazine is very evident. Showing an improvement in all aspects including the layout, images, text and colour use. There was also the fact that with my extra time and progression in my knowledge of magazines I was able to create an extra page which was my double page spread. This displays various new conventions and featured which I was unable to display when creating either my front cover on contents page. I also believe there is a clear improvement in my evaluations from my preliminary task to my music magazine, with the use of technical key terms which I had learned by carrying out my research and analysis.