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?

When looking back to my preliminary task, and comparing the front cover of my school magazine (right) to the front cover of my music magazine (left), I realise I have learnt during the process of making the second magazine. When faced with the challenge of creating the front cover of a school magazine, I didn’t take the necessary actions of which I took when creating my music magazine. For example, planning of the layout and content of the magazines which resulted in me planning as I went along with the School magazine. Also, I did not manage my time wisely with the School magazine which resulted in the contents page being extremely rushed.

Photography: I liked the image I used in the preliminary task, however it was the only image I considered to feature on the front of the magazine. Whereas with my music magazine, I planned the shoot, and organised the appearance of the model in order to achieve a suitable image for the front cover. Because of being more experienced at this point in Photoshop, I was able to edit the picture more what I wanted/needed. Also, I had several photo shoots in order to create more of a selection of images. I also went out to gigs and took pictures there in order to get images to feature in my magazine that suited the live music element of my magazine.

Layout: With the preliminary task I didn’t explore many layouts of the magazine, due to lack of planning and poor time management. However, with my music magazine I created at least 2/3 possible layouts per section of the magazine. During the process of creating the magazine, I tried out various layouts until I found a suitable layout which I was happy with. In the end, I don’t think I stuck with any of my original layout plans, however it gave me an idea of how to lay out the pages.

Fonts: With my original preliminary task, although I explored font colours, I only used one type of font throughout the front page and contents page. However, with the music magazine, I explored several different colour schemes. I also discovered a website where you can download free fonts which I used to select several fonts to use throughout my magazine.