Main Task: Evaluation Question 7

EVALUATION QUESTION 7:

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

Looking back at my preliminary task I think I have managed to learn a large amount of information when it comes to the progression of a simple, basic put together magazine to an almost legit looking music magazine. I had to learn time management and had to learn to prioritise what would need to be done first. To piece together my final product I had to know what I had to do first, whether it was take my pictures first or do my audience research and planning. I had to plan when I was going to take my pictures and when the people I had model for me, were going to be free to be able to take my pictures of them.

The preliminary magazine task was completed with very limited Photoshop knowledge. As it was only a cover and contents page I did not know how I would decide to go about laying out the pages due to not having prior experience of creating a magazine before. Completing this preliminary task had allowed me to use my experience from it to far better help myself when it came to the main task. I had no knowledge of being able to use the magic wand tool, lasso tool or pen tool to cut out my images to better place them on a more suited background. Alongside not knowing how to add continuity to my front cover and contents page via my fonts and text placements, it made my preliminary look very shoddy compared to my final product.

Due to the shoddiness of my preliminary task, I was able to look at the faults I had left in my preliminary and correct them indefinitely on my music magazine. These included fixing up my font choices, adding subtle effects to my pictures and fonts and providing better placement for my cover-lines. I made sure not to use the same font from the preliminary or add any cheap looking effects just for the fact I could, I made sure my choices had a purpose to help create a subtleness of authenticity to my magazine. I used the font ‘cooper black’ as it had a similar feel to the Rolling Stone magazine font, especially with the added drop shadow effect I decided to add. I had also added a stroke effect to the magazine front cover to create a border effect, an effect I wanted to add in my preliminary task but I never knew how to.

Throughout the process of progression of college magazine to music magazine I constantly attempted to find things I could fix so I could improve my magazine. After I completed my contents page it seemed like something was lacking as the 
background was a bland gray and my contents page image did not seem to fill its own space. Because of this I taught myself how to create a background effect on the simple gray background. I added a ‘rising sun’ background to help add life to the contents page. By this point I had acquired a better understanding of continuity and Photoshop techniques to apply to my double page spread.