Question 7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression

from it to the full product?

Planning and preparation

• Judging from my preliminary task you can tell I didn’t do a lot of research and drafting into my target audience. I simply just focused on ‘college kids’ when I should have focused primarily on one social group.

• This was important because college isn’t made up of one social group, it’s got so many and my preliminary task didn’t benefit any social group in perticular. It’s important to research your chosen target audience.

Organisation of time

• I was very rushed with the preliminary task and didn’t think through at all how and when I was going to make my magazine.

• For my main task, I learnt from this and made sure I’d left enough time to focus on the front cover, contents page and double page spread equally.

Technical photography skills: Preliminary Task:

My photography wasn’t amazing and I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the photo’s in enough detail. The angel and quality of this photo isn’t very good. It’s done in natural lighting and doesn’t look very professional.

Technical photography skills:Main Task:

For my main task, I used a better camera to produce better quality photos. I also changed the angel and position of my model to make it look different and unique to the types of photographs other magazines have. I also used Photoshop and the magnetic laser tool to cut out my model and have her on a white background, making her legs especially stand out.

Technical conventions of front coverPreliminary Task:

The portrait setting was used well which is something I learnt to do from the very start of the whole project.

My model is looking away from the camera but using Photoshop, I was able to make her eyes really stand out using the sharpen tool which really makes the eyes become the main focus as it bounces out from the page.

Technical conventions of front coverMain Task:

Portrait setting used again to make my model the main focus of my magazine. But this time I used no outside back drop as most mainstream magazines use plain colours.

Model looking straight at the camera lens, drawing the audience in.

Using the brightness and contrast tools to make the whole cover look more pure and smooth.

Using Photoshop tools such as the sharpen, blur and magic wand tool to cover blemishes and make features such as they eyes stand out.

Technical conventions of contents page: Preliminary Task

Having a sub-heading of ‘Features’

Using InDesign as a way of creating the contents page which was a new experience for me.

Taking and using my own photos relating to my target audience.

Technical conventions of contents page: Main Task

Using the portrait setting for all my photos and having lighting from above to create effect.

Adding an editors letter in InDesign like real magazines use along with a signiture of the editor which I downloaded from dafont.com.

Specficicsubjects relating to my target audience.

Post Production skills:

Using image manipulation in Photoshop, I was able to take this setting and create it to end up with a final picture which looks professionally taken.

I mostly used brighten and contrast to even out the quality of the image so I could then get the outline of my model to use the magnetic laser tool to cut around her and place her on a white background.

Awareness of the target audienceIn my preliminary task, there was no specific social group that it was aimed towards at as college is full of different types of students all into different genres of music and fashion.My main task allowed me to design my magazines to a specific audience which I could research and base my knowledge of their likes and dislikes and drive those idea’s into my magazine.As it was a music magazine, obviously the content of my magazine would be music-related so it was very important to research that first.

Biggest thing I have learnt from undertaking this project.

• The biggest thing I’ve learnt has definitely got to be how to use InDesign and Photoshop which before, I had no idea how.

• It’s been an eye-opener into how you can manipulate an image so much that it can make people look very different. It’s taught me that the celebrities magazines portray can be fake and not the ‘real’ them.

Targets and Improvements

• I wanted to achieve a professional looking magazine which I could see being sold in shops. I think I’ve successfully achieved this as I did a lot of research on real magazines and copied idea’s. I think my front cover is different from others and would stand out, which is another aim I wanted to achieve.

• On a personal level, I feel I have improved massively since the preliminary project and I’ve learnt a lot of new skills along the way.