QUESTION 7: LOOKING BACK AT YOUR

PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE

LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO

THE FULL PRODUCT?

Cover’s

Masthead: In my student magazine, the masthead was too small and seemed to get lost in the emptiness of the cover. A masthead is supposed to stand out, which is why I made the on the full product red(which is my colour theme, inspired by Q) and in a bold font. It is also conventional to have it at the top of the page. Unlike in my preliminary task, the cover lines have two different colours of font in them. I picked out the name of the artists featured inside and made the font of it red and larger to make it stand out. Using just black in my preliminary task made the cover look very flat and one dimensional. To the name of the featuring artists I also used a drop shadow to lift it even more.The photo that I used in the final product takes up the entire cover, whereas in my preliminary task it didn’t, so I had to have a strip of colour running along the top and the bottom of the page making it look unprofessional and unfinished as the cover looked empty.

The strapline gives more information about what to expect inside. I didn’t include one in my preliminary task, making it look even more bare and empty, leaving the reader unknown as to what is inside.

I included a competition in both of my covers, but in my final one there were more details to it which makes it more interesting, otherwise the reader have no idea what the competition is about so it wouldn’t draw them into the magazine.

The sub headline is large and in the centre of the cover, giving it more of a cluttered look which fits in with the style of music. In the preliminary task I didn’t include a sub headline which contributed to why the cover looked really empty.

The pull quote I used links to the featuring artist inside. I didn’t include a pull quote in my preliminary task , which made it boring as it didn’t have much content on there which would draw many people in. The pull quote draws people in as it’s a brief insight into the article, it also gives a sense of the narrative voice.

Contents Page’s

I included a title on both contents page. However, the one I made on my final product was bigger and more bold to make it stand out. The title on the preliminary task was an ordinary font that wasn’t bold or big enough to stand out. Also, I left a big space around the text in the preliminary task which was pointless as everything was already spaced out so it emphasized the fact that there wasn’t a lot of information on there. By packing everything closely together in the final magazine, it looks full of information and more realistic.

Making use of the space on the page is important, which is why I took the opportunity to use a scaled down image of my cover in my contents page. This reminds the reader of the cover, as well as filling up the space, making sure it doesn’t look blank. I didn’t use this idea when working on my preliminary task, if I did, it wouldn’t have looked so empty. The page numbers I used in my final magazine are much more realistic than the one’s I used in the preliminary task (where there were only 13 pages according to the contents). For the final magazine I made the page number red to make it more interesting, rather than just making it bold like in the preliminary task. I also included absolutely no detail below in the preliminary task about the features and what’s on the pages. It is conventional for a magazine’s contents page to have lots of detail on because it is potentially the page that will either sell the magazine to someone.

A subscription box is important in magazine’s as it gets the company more customers on a regular basis, making more money for them. As seen in NME I made it yellow (contrasting the colours I had included on this page) because it was important for it to stand out. I didn’t include a subscription box in the preliminary task, and seeing as it’s important for profits, this was a big form to miss out.The images I used in the final magazine mostly took up one of the columns I used, helping with the busy look I was aiming for. They were also ranging in size, and not of the same people. The images I used in the preliminary task were of the same people and were small and spread apart from each other. I also included page numbers on the music magazine in the corner of the images which corresponded to the features on the other side of the page. The pictures on the preliminary task didn’t have this, which made it look like they weren’t corresponding to anything.