Evaluation Question 7

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



I believe I have progressed a lot since making my college magazine, as you can see in the comparison of the pictures. I believe the key to this was my progression of my skills in 'Photoshop'. After having a taster of it during the production of my preliminary task, I began understanding it more and being able to use more tools effectively allowed me to produce better quality material. I began to know where everything was and how to use it, which obviously helped me when creating my music magazine. Within 'Photoshop' I found that the 'magic wand' tool was incredibly affective and useful, as you could sinlge someone or something out of an image. Also I liked using the 'box tool' to create boxes for things such as text, colours or to use as box to promote or advertise something. I found the variation of colours and fonts to be useful, as you could change things around and you had a lot of options. Also the 'stroke tool' allowed you to easily make something stand out, e.g. a piece of text amongst other text. I believe my music magazine to be a lot more stronger than my college magazine, also I think the conventions and layout is much better put together in my music magazine in contrast to my college magazine. I think the main difference is the colour scheme. I believe the colour scheme in my music magazine was a lot more strict and had more class and elegance. You can easily recognise how my skills have blossomed just through the contrast of the images.
When coming to choosing my layout, I had to remember my target audience and what they would like to see. So I went with a scruffy font which reminded me of something that would interest a 'skater'. It wouldn't be a font you'd see in a magazine like 'Saga' as it's aimed at older people, and a font like that would not appeal to older people. Deciding on my feature article was quite an easy decision. As, from research, I realised a safe and well-executed type of article was a Q&A. Therefore I decided to pick a popular artist within the Indie genre and arrange a Q&A as my feature article, as this would be appealing to my target audience. I believe feedback's important because then you know how you done, you will know, after receiving feedback, you will know if you hit your targets and achieved your goals. You need to be aware to the detail of your magazine because if it's rubbish detail then no-one would want to read it and it would not sell, also if, at first sight, it does not look appealing, that majority of people would just walk past the magazine. I also arranged a questionnaire to discover what more was needed in the music magazine. For both magazines I produced, I researched them on the internet to discover what was needed within the magazine. Once I had decided which genre of magazine I was going to create, I researched similar magazines of that genre; NME and Q, to see which conventions and layout they represented which would attract my audience. 'Photoshop' was the key to the production of both my music magazine and my college magazine.