Evaluation - Question 7

Looking back at your preliminary, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The preliminary task I completed at the beginning of the course is a complete contrast to my final product. The school magazine that I completed as a preliminary task looks bland, unprofessional and boring. The article headline around the image on the front cover doesn’t fit the message I was trying to get across to the audience. The magazine was supposed to look exciting and intriguing in the attempt to create a positive impression of the school but instead the font choice made it look bland. Instead of having the white box header at the top of the page, I should have blended the colours so it didn’t look so sectioned, this would have made the page flow better. For my final magazine front cover I edited the pictures to give it a clear and bright appearance, I placed the title of the magazine in a more suitable area and chose a more appropriate font to write the articles in. By changing these aspects of my front page I have created a far more appealing and professional looking alternative rock magazine front cover. I have learnt that the layout is extremely important when trying to create an appealing professional looking magazine.

The contents page of the preliminary task lacks colour and images. The page is full of blank spaces and look empty and un-complete. Therefore when I made my music magazine contents page I made sure I addressed this issue. I added more colour, mainly red as this was the colour scheme I decided on, this immediately made the page more eye-catching and exciting. I decided to lay the images out differently and make them different sizes; I think this makes the page look unique. Although the page contains much more compared to my school magazine contents page in the preliminary task, I sectioned key information. This meant the page was still organised and easy to read.

My double spread differs slightly from the plan I originally made as in practice the font size I wrote in was too big. When I came to create my own music magazine I decided to make the font much smaller so it created the appearance of being packed with interesting gossip and news from the artist. I decided to make this change because I think this will help attract my target audience. However apart from font size, the majority of my original plan for my music magazine stayed the same. For example: I kept the main image on the left of the page with the three vertical photo-booth ones to the right. In this respect I think my plan was successful and meant I had a clear idea of what to do when coming to create it. From this I have learnt how important a plan can be.