EVALUATION: Question 7 - 'Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?'

These are the images from my two front covers; the left is from my preliminary task and the right from my music magazine main task. I think that I have learned a lot from devising my preliminary task, and have used what I learned in order to create a front cover for my music magazine which was a lot more interesting and professional looking. My preliminary task is not very visually interesting; the most obvious difference is the typography. Since creating my preliminary task, I have learned about Paul Fenton's Typography rules; and I have therefore thought more carefully about the font styles that I used on my front cover. I learned that it is perfectly acceptable to use different fonts on a page; the use of a lot of different fonts not only makes the page look more interesting, but also helps to create some brand identity to some extent. Using different fonts and colours finally has the effect of exaggerating certain words and features, drawing attention to them. Secondly, I learned more about the mode of address of a magazine from creating my preliminary task. I learned that certain buzz words need to be used in order to really attract an audience to a certain feature, and therefore I used words such as 'exclusive' and 'bonus feature' on my music magazine front cover; something which I learned not only from creating my preliminary task but also from studying the conventions of other music magazines. My knowledge of the use of box outs on the front cover was expanded after completing my preliminary task; on my school magazine none of the cover lines really stood out very much, and had I tried to experiment with box outs more then perhaps this could have been different.

 

With regard to my contents pages, I thought more carefully about the layout of the page. With my preliminary task, I unintentionally made it very simplistic, something which - had I done the task again I would have thought more carefully about. My target audience for my preliminary task was school children, and therefore it would not have suited them to have a contents page in a magazine that was so basic and conventional; childrens' lives are busy, and my contents page should have reflected this. With my main task, I previously looked at other contents pages on the internet in order to gain inspiration from them - as I have explained in previous posts. By doing this, and by thinking more carefully about my target audience, I have been able to make my music magazine more appropriate and professional looking for my ideal reader. With regard to the images on my contents pages, I learned from my preliminary task and the study of the conventions of other contents pages before creating my music magazine that contents pages tend to be very busy so as to attract the attention of the reader as much as possible. I included one main image on both of my pages, but with my music magazine I positioned the image so that it was part of the page and also added other images such as a photo of each of the editors as well as examples of pages found in the magazine. Through learning about the conventions of other music magazines, I have also learned about the use of the eyeline of the model in images in order to attract attention to other areas of the page. I have conveyed this knowledge in my contents page, as my model is looking at the images of features in the magazine, so as to draw attention to them. Finally, I did not frame any of the shots on my preliminary task. On printing it I realised that the images did not really stand out very well, and decided to include frames on the rest of the images that I used in my music magazine. This can be seen most obviously on my features page, where I have put a white background around some images so that they look like polaroid pictures; I also anchored these images in a serif font in order to add to this polaroid idea. However, I also framed the images of the features pages on my contents page; this made my page look more professional as well as making the images stand out further.

Through creating my school magazine, I have learned the above techniques and applied my new ideas and knowledge in order to create a more realistic and professional looking main task; a music magazine.