Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel you have

learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Question 7

Front cover

First of all it is clearly evident that I had lack of Photoshop skills when doing the preliminary task. Ican say that because the title of magazine is in a corner which makes get hardly any attentionfrom the audience, whereas for the final product the title is big, and in addition I applied afew effects to it. One of the effects were the glow effect this made the title glow. The secondeffect that I applied was the embossing effect this made the title stick out. So just bycomparing the title I can say that I have improvised in using Photoshop. On the preliminaryfront cover I only had one skill in Photoshop and that was cropping out images, that skill isuseful but not so useful on its own. The background of the preliminary front cover is clockwhich connotes depression. The same applies to the model’s facial expression it suggestdepression from a lot of school work. I haven’t used any conventions of a typical magazinesuch as direct mode of address for my preliminary task, whereas for the final product typicalconventions of a magazine such as direct mode of address has been used.

Preliminary task Final product

Contents page

With the contents page in the preliminary task I didn’teven include the name of the magazine, and theissue number, whereas on the final product inthe contents page I have included both of thosefeatures. For the preliminary task the contentswere not even organised and didn’t have acategory where similar contents would fit into.However these typical features of a musicmagazine were definitely included in the finalproduct. Same as the front cover I had lack ofPhotoshop skills which is a reason why thepreliminary contents page is poorly designed. Ialso didn’t include an editorial and the editor’ssignature in the preliminary contents page.Whereas in the final product I have included aeditorial with the editor’s signature, moreover Ialso made up a website where the readers canview the magazine digitally online. This showsthat my understanding of typical magazinefeatures has improved and I am able to applythem on my final product.

Preliminary task Final product

Double page spread

For the double page spread I had to organise the layout of what had to be on that page. I wasn’t told to create a double page spread for my preliminary task therefore it was challenging to create one. However by looking at professional double page spreads I got some inspiration. For this page one of my Photoshop skill is emphasised with the layout of the text on the right hand side page, it required a skill to make sure that the goes around the image of the model. I used the pen tool to create a shape where I can input the text, this is a new skill that I developed with Photoshop while creating the final product. I have also used a drop cap at the very beginning of the article which used by professional editors for their double page spread. Since this article is an interview I have distinguished the font colour between the questions and answers, some professional magazines use bold style font for the questions and regular style for the answers. However I have used colour to differentiate the questions and answers.

Conclusion

Overall I have developed numerous of Photoshop skillsthroughout the time gap between my preliminarytask and the final product. I have also learnt what thekey ingredients are, along with the recipe to attractthe target audience. I have learnt how to organise mycontents on the contents page, which I didn’t knowbefore. Further more I have learnt what the keyfeatures of a magazines are, and how I can applythem to the magazine that I make.