Looking back and your preliminary task, what do you

feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full

product?

When creating my preliminary task, I did little product research. I did not look into any other magazines for inspiration or to

study the conventions.  

Overall I believe that my main task was a lot better than my preliminary task.

 With my preliminary, it came out looking a lot more like a school students piece of

work rather than professional. In comparison, my main task looked a lot

more like a professional magazine.

ResearchMy lack of research for my preliminary meant that I wasn’t aware of the different conventions that were needed in order to make the magazine look good.  For example, with my preliminary task, I did not include a bar code or price. The bar code and price is something that is found on all magazines front covers, so they are fundamental parts of a magazine. Missing out these vital components led to my magazine looking incomplete and unprofessional.

My preliminary magazine front cover

My main task magazine front cover

Research

Doing research and analysing different music magazines helped me know what would make my

magazine look better.

This is definitely an aspect that helped me develop. Looking at the way different magazines

created their magazines and also asking why they did certain things helped me gain a better

understanding into what is necessary to create a magazine.

ResearchLooking at different music magazines helped me realise that there were certain tactics and conventions that are

used to help convey the music genre.  

For example, I saw that magazines such as NME and Kerrang used a lot of dark colours to convey the rock genre.

Having this knowledge helped me when creating a colour scheme, as I chose colours that I felt reflected my genre of

indie music.

ResearchAll in all, doing research helped me realise that every little thing that I did had to have some sort of purpose that would help to reach my audience. This is not something I really thought about in preliminary, as I just essentially chose things that looked good to me rather than thinking about what my audience would want.  I put this knowledge into practice by analysing every thing I did for my magazine. For example, I thought about my audience a lot more (shown in my reader profile) and also about the genre of music I was focusing on. These things made my final magazine look much better than my preliminary magazine as the more I thought about them; the more likely I was to create a magazine that reached out to my desired audience.

SoftwareMy knowledge of software improved and was a big part of my development. The main difference in my

preliminary task and my main task is that I used Photoshop with my main task rather than using

Microsoft Publisher like I did with my preliminary task.  

I cite the use of Photoshop as a big reason for why my preliminary task came out looking unprofessional.

With Photoshop there was a lot more I could do, so I wasn’t as limited with my options. For example, Photoshop gave me more of a chance to edit my

photographs by giving me more styles and tools to change how the photos looked.

 Therefore, developing my knowledge in different

software’s helped me develop and is a big reason for why there is such difference between the quality of my

preliminary magazine and my main magazine.

I think that by doing a preliminary task, it helped me to evaluate where I went wrong. I

saw the main task as sort of a ‘second chance’, where I could correct where I went wrong in my preliminary in order to make a

magazine that was much better. 

Overall, I think I progressed and developed a lot, and this is shown by the quality of my final magazine being much higher than my

preliminary. Whilst I still saw mistakes in my final product, I was pleased with it, especially

in comparison to my preliminary magazine.