Evaluation Questions: 7

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

Since the creation of my preliminary task, I have progressed my understanding of both magazine conventions and aesthetic features. I have learnt key features of both layout and genre based decision making. I have increased my understanding on the use of various technologies, mainly photoshop but also new introduced software such as Adobe Indesign. My knowledge of the magazine industry has also vastly improved since the creation of my school magazine.


In terms of my time management on both tasks, I spent far less time in the planning and research stages of my school magazine than that which I spent on the music magazine. I learnt that in order for the quality of the product to be as high as possible, that research and development is key. For the school magazine task I did very little research, I looked at our school magazine and that was the extent of my investigation. In relation, my music magazine concept was subject to mass scrutiny by both me with my more precise and in-depth research such as looking at various other real world publications (NME and Q) aswell as from my peers (my subject teacher and classmates) in my peer assessment and my target audience investigation.


My equipment of choice for both the creation of my school magazine and my main task was fairly different although the programme Adobe Photoshop made a consistent appearance throughout. For my pictures taken in my preliminary I took my photos using my iPhone 4, being fairly inexperienced, the setting was on the school field. In relation to this, my understanding of the quality of the picture was advanced and I used my new Nikon J1 to take higher quality photo's. This shows a progression of my understanding to create good quality pictures and in turn, creating a good quality media product. 


I put much more thought into the surroundings of the pictures for my main task, aswell as using props more effectively. In all honesty, my preliminary front cover features a fellow classmate holding a camera, this was a random shot and I decided I liked it after coming up with the idea of a media story. In comparison, I spent far longer in the creation of setup and deciding my prop use and backdrop for the music magazine in order to ensure the quality was higher.

The front cover of my music magazine uses a lab coat, geek chic glasses, a clipboard and a pair of headphones to help portray a persona and bring identity to the magazine. Likewise, my contents pictures were taken and edited to match the conventions of the dubstep genre. If you care to look at the pictures in my preliminary, my pictures are unedited and appear skewed due to my lack of understanding for scale of pictures. This also includes prop use and backdrop research ie: if you look above you see that I used a vinyl record to ensure my reader knows who the person is, the background of the picture featuring 'Mote Kontrol' contains a brick wall and metal door, with various graffiti tags across, an effective attachment to my picture, I planned the use of the wall when coming across it before. For the front cover picture composition, I used the same 10mm-30mm Nikon Lens on my camera however to gain lighting without the need for using the built in flash, I used 2 lamps to provide effective lighting for the subject.

As you can see the layout of the front cover appears fairly consistent between both although a greater understanding of the importance of not leaving space is shown in the progression, as is the case for the contents page where there is a severe reduction in the space shown. This is mainly due to the introduction of realistic and appropriate layout methods. I have use the 3x3 grid rule where the page is divided into 9 squares also referred to as the rule of thirds. 

In terms of personal accomplishment, since the creation of the original preliminary I have furthered my understanding of Adobe Photoshop and have a much greater understanding of the capabilities of the software than earlier on in the course. The various effects both for pictures and text have been an example of Photoshop capabilities I have learnt aswell as a general understanding of the importance of layering work. 

My time management (as briefly stated earlier) has been fairly out of balance for both tasks and this is mainly due to this being a topic of new introduction and therefore having to come to the sudden realisation of extensive workloads. 


My font selection has changed from both tasks. After understanding the conventional theme for each type of magazine due to research, you will notice the font choices for my finished coursework piece is genre based and not just the default 'Times New Roman' or 'Arial' font. With Dubstep research complete, the more modern style fonts were selected. I have a better understanding of colour schemes as shown by the gelling of black white and teal as indicated by my target audience and genre understanding. 

Moving on to my double page spread I learnt how to effectively use Adobe Indesign to my advantage. It allows for easy column layout and text wrap options, features I was not familiar with before my introduction to the software. Since the preliminary task, I have learnt that Indesign is a better software in the creation of pages in terms of their layout as guidelines are already set out and you can easily move around your text without the need to create multiple text layers, something that Photoshop lacks and that I was not aware of previously. Although this software would have been fairly useless in the creation of my preliminary task due to the lack of text appearing on the elements, for my double page spread it proved to be a valuable asset. Allowing me to directly import and alter .psd's straight from photoshop itself. 

Decision making was another key skill I have improved on. The ability to make decisions whilst slightly disregarding your own bias opinion of your work in favour of people who are knowledgeable in both aesthetics&design and the target audience for the genre magazine is a key skill which since my preliminary I have used in order to result in the highest standard of work possible to submit. Overall I feel that my progression is seen fairly evidently when reading through this blog however these points clarify and highlight the steps I have taken in getting better at both the subject and getting better in the creation of elements using the various methods listed here.