Draft 7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The first thing that I've learnt while doing this task is how to use Photoshop properly, at first when I was making my preliminary task I was very confused with how to use Photoshop. But as I progressed through the course I got better at using Photoshop I learnt what the different icons did and how to use them. Another thing that I think that I've learnt and improve on is how important the picture is to a magazine, for the prelim task I took my pictures in the class room without any tripods, lighting and white screen. In fact for the mise en send for the photo I used the white board in the classroom, but when it came to taking my pictures for my actual magazine I booked to go in the AVS room and had all the equipment to take a good picture. So I had the tripod, lights and white screen and then when I started take the pictures you could really see the difference in picture quality. I learnt when taking the pictures how the shadow in the background can really effect the quality of the image and when I was taking my prelim photos I didn't even take the shadow into consideration.

When looking back to my prelim front cover I can see that I did not have any knowledge of how to position things or what layout I wanted to use that is why things look muddled up, however after I did some research into how to lay things out on the front cover it became much more easier to work out where things should go and then I used this knowledge on my music magazine. I have learnt how important the positioning of text and images on the front cover is. Next I learnt how important the colour is on the front cover, on my prelim cover I used colours that I don't think match and this made the cover look unprofessional and not nice to look at. When crafting my music magazine cover I had looked at other music magazines for help when choosing a colour and then once I found the right colours to have on my music magazine I added them and this made it look much better than the prelim cover, so I have learnt that the colour used on the front cover of a magazine can decide weather the cover looks smart and professional or looking like it's been made within 20 minutes. Lastly for the front cover I learnt that the font is a vital factor on how the end cover will look like. So on the prelim cover I just used the fonts that were available at the time without giving it any thought, but when making the music magazine cover I did research into fonts trying to find fonts that will suit my genre of music and that will look good on a magazine cover.





My prelim contents page is not very good, because looking at it I can see that I did not have any ideas or knowledge of how to construct it. Starting off with the layout of the page I did not know were to place the photo on the page and also I did not know where to put the contents on the page. However when making my contents page for the music magazine I did research into contents page used my real magazines and selected a style that I liked and then used it. I have learnt how important the layout is to a contents page because if you don't get it right it can make the page look unprofessional. The picture that I used in the prelim task were taken in the class room and the quality of the picture were not very good as I did not use any of the camera equipment. Also I did not know what kind of shot to take so I just took any random picture, but when it came to taking photos for my magazine I had a shot in mind that I wanted to use and I had all the proper camera equipment so the quality of the picture was much better. The fonts that I used in the prelim contents page were again from the computer and once I did research I found good fonts that would good for my magazine and fitted well with the genre of music that I chose. I have learnt how important it is to chose a good font because if you don't use a font that fits with your style of magazine it can make the magazine look bad.  

In conclusion I feel that I have learnt many things when it comes to making a music magazine, the most that I have learnt is how important the lighting and the camera work is when it comes to taking a photo. I have also learnt how difficult it is to choose the right colours, fonts and layouts to have on a page.