Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
During the preliminary task I was not familiar with using Photoshop therefore it was quite a difficult slow progress from the beginning. As the process has gone on I have gained new skills and an insight into Photoshop itself with being able to use the different functions. My college magazine is rather weak as I was not able to do several drafts as much as I was on my music magazine. This limited my chances to make any drastic changes and improve it with the use of audience feedback. I also had much more time researching around my chosen genre of pop as well as looking at existing pop magazines and identifying key conventions which I took on board when developing my final product.
It is extremely evident in identifying the drastic differences between both magazines. Also I learnt to take appropriate images which are suitable for the type of magazine, while choosing the right pictures which will attract my target audience. Looking at images within my college magazine, models were not directly looking at the audience. This may make them not feel involved and detached away from the magazine as a reader with not having any sort of eye contact. Therefore within my main task I choose several images to make the audience feel the model is looking at them as this is very common within pop magazines. The images which do not show direct eye contact where purposely chosen to show realism. On the contents page it states “Max first concert off the year”. As he is not looking at the camera but the audience will be available to identify he is in a performance.
I also learnt that choosing the correct colour scheme is vital, from my preliminary task I choose boring colours which may not appear to many people as its not eye catching. Therefore I took this on board and found out generally many pop magazine consists of bright colours therefore this influenced my choice on my music magazine.
I figured out the alignments of the typography and made sure they were
equal and consistent making my magazine look professional, this was something I
did not take account of within my college magazine.
Lastly, I believe that the most improvement was on my contents page as I was able to take my time in producing the best product. Being able to find unique fonts on a website called www.dafont.com which I did not use during my preliminary task, however it allowed me during my main task to discover and download new fonts which will be suitable for my magazine.
