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?

From my preliminary task, to my college magazine, to the final task of creating my music magazine I believe I have greatly developed my skills. Due to the research I have conducted on the magazine industry and the key conventions each magazine contains, my knowledge on magazines as a whole has greatly improved. I have learnt things such as; that Masthead is a key magazine convention, the reason behind ‘drop shadows’ on coverlines, and the institutions behind them. Before this task I was a complete novice at using the Adobe Photoshop software and I relied heavily on basic software such as; Paint and Microsoft Publisher but as my time using Photoshop went on, I grew more and more confident with user interface and the tools it includes which has made the quality of my final magazine much greater than anything I could achieve on a more basic software.

As clearly seen when looking at both pieces of work, there is a significant progression in quality from the preliminary task to the final product. The change of software that I use and the skills I have gained with this software have been the biggest factors that have improved the overall quality as well as the research I have conducted on magazine conventions. For my preliminary task I used Microsoft Publisher, which has very restricted editing options and as a result this software has barriers for creativity so the finished product appears very basic and unprofessional looking. The lack of editing ability was purely reflected on my preliminary task and can be seen through the quality of the final front cover and contents page. By using Photoshops advanced tools, such as; ‘drop shadow’ and ‘magic wand tool’ I was able to cut around my images perfectly and able to emphasise coverlines on my front cover in order to stand out to the audience and give the page a more three-dimensional aesthetic and thus it can stand-out more to the audience. With the help of all these extra features, Photoshop enabled me to create a professional music magazine which is appropiate for my target audience. The magic wand tool was a vital feature for me to use whilst producing my magazine, especially with how many images needed separated from their background, this has greatly helped me to produce a magazine with this height of quality.

Regarding the use of my images on my final music magazine the quality of them is significantly better than my preliminary tasks ones which is due to the quality of camera I was using as well as the setting that I took the pictures in. For the final magazine images I was able to use multiple props and manipulate the space in which I was taking the photos as I wished. This allowed me to have more creative control over the images I would use for my final music magazine. Using the Photoshop software I was also able to edit the images whichever way I liked such as using the hue and saturation tools as well as changing the brightness and the colour exposure of the images.  

Once again when comparing the two pieces together, I believe it shows my greater understanding of the needed conventions on a magazine and the language that should be used when creating a magazine. For example with my preliminary task the lexical field included a very basic use of words and language where as my music magazine is simply all music related with a conscious use of language which aimed more at its target audience of 16-18 year olds.

Although I made several changes from the preliminary task to the final magazine, I kept many of the basic conventions the same and used flat plans as a guide for the production of my magazine. I kept thoroughly to my preliminary task flat plan, but I did not for my music magazine. I made many extensive changes to the flat plan of my contents page and my double page spread to improve the overall aesthetic of these pages and by making them more practical so the reader may navigate these pages more easily.

Overall, during the creation of my media product I had to take into consideration many factors such as; the time I had to produce my work; technological issues and my target audience. I have learnt a great deal whilst completing this project, from the start of the year. Being able to meet deadlines proved difficult, especially when feedback was needed. If I started this project again I would create my own personal and achievable targets and aim to beat those deadlines. By receiving feedback by my tutor I believe my magazine benefitted a great deal, especially by receiving criticism of my blog/magazine as I was able to amend any problems in order to submit better work and achieve a higher grade.