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

My editing skills have become more precise since the preliminary task. As you can see the student model has a slight white edge around her head making her look like a cardboard cut out. Whereas on my final magazine I was able to use the editing tool such as the magic wand and eraser, more effectively to create the appearance of the image and background being one.

The student magazine lacks even the most basic generic conventions such as the date and issue number which may make it confusing for regular readers of the magazine as the order of the releases could get mixed up. I realised this flaw and rectified it within my music magazine. I also added a price and barcode so that it could be sold to my target audience

The extra research before my final front cover allowed me to become more familiar with layouts and generic conventions. This additional analysis is an obvious help because my student magazine lacks structure and looks too spaced out compared to the music one. These improvements are down to me following trends such as the left side third rule and layering text on top of the main image to add more dimensions to the page. The increased amount of layering also makes my music magazine cover appear more busy and as though it has a greater deal of detail content for readers.

The contents page for student magazine is clearly lacking a lot of detail. The features don’t follow the typical convention of being in columns on the left hand side which makes the page seem very scattered. This is also because the story subheadings aren't accompanied with an explanation. Therefore readers are left with a vague, disconnected feel from the magazine. By using an obvious column structure in my music magazine, the content is well organized in order of importance making it easier to navigate for readers

The font I used for my student magazine was too thin and spaced out, meaning it left the contents page looking bare and was incredibly hard to read. In contrast for my music magazine I spent more time searching on Dafont.com for unique yet bold templates for my text. I repeatedly used the same three fonts throughout the main project to make it more uniform. I arranged it so the most crucial information such as subheading and page numbers were written in the more bold fonts. But I still managed to find relatively prominent one even for the article explanation writing, to ensure it was easy to read.

Since my prelim task I became more confident when taking and editing photos. This is shown by the contrast in images I've used. For the student magazine I cut out an image from the internet which showed a lack of skill and didn't’t compliment the magazine theme well. Whereas for my music magazine I even went to the lengths of editing a photo I created myself, onto the Grammys red carpet back drop. In order to maintain the sophisticated, professional R&B genre I was representing.

By developing from using an image from the internet to using two original pictures photographed by myself, I was able to direct the model in order to coincide with magazines theme. I particularly gave attention to detail within the mise-en-scene used by the model. The outfits for the women were long and glamorous to fit in with the prestigious award ceremony a particular article was about. By combing the use of a picture and subheading the reader gained a more in-depth knowledge about the feature, which in turn should make them want to read it more. Also by composing the models position and body language I could create an innovative pose to portray the laid back nature of my main artist and specific music genre (R&B).