Evaluation - Question 7

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 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? 

 I have progressed my understanding of both magazine conventions and aesthetic features since creating my preliminary task. I have learnt about layout and design of specific music genres. I have learnt about new technologies such as Adobe Photoshop and InDesign, which in turn has also increased my knowledge of how magazines are designed and produced. I have also learnt more about the magazine industry since creating my school magazine.


Time Management
 The amount of time that I spent on my Preliminary task and my Main task greatly differ, as I put a lot my time and effort into my Main task, since it required a lot more detail and design relating to existing Music Magazines, which was vital to creating a high-quality. This meant that I needed to do more planning and research for my Music Magazine. The extent for my school magazine was looking at my own school's magazine and a few others, but I didn't do any labelled or written research like for my Music Magazine.


Equipment
 Photoshop was the program that I used most constantly throughout the creation of both my tasks, as well as the 2 camera's - Olympus FE-360 (image left) and the camera on a Sony XPERIA phone (image right) - using the phone for my School Magazine and the Olympus camera for the Music Magazine. I also used an iMac computer for all of my work, apart for occasionally using my own laptop - Sony VAIO (image below left) - for writing on my blog.

Photographs
 I put much more thought into what I wanted the pictures for my Music Magazine to look like, in terms pf camera angles, composition, props, background and pose of the model. The picture for my School Magazine was taken when me and two classmates went around the school looking for ideas for our front cover, which ended up with me taking a picture of my classmate in the library, as the thought occurred to me that a 

student featured in a library would be ideal for a school magazine. I needed a suitable background for my Music Magazine however, compared to my School Magazine, so the text and other images featured on my Front Cover were easily visible, 

which I did through cutting out my model in Photoshop using the Extraction Tool. I told my model what I wanted him to look like in terms of costume, props and pose, which I didn't consider so much with my School Magazine Front Cover. I also edited my Music Magazine photographs in more detail compared to my School Magazine, including the use of Brightness and Contrast as well as simply 'fixing' and 'auto-adjusting' my pictures.


Fonts
From researching other music magazines I found that they often use many different fonts on their front covers, whilst still maintaining a house style across the magazine, something which I believe I have accomplished in my Music Magazine, possible less so in my School Magazine. For example, in my Double Page Spread (image right), I made use of 6 different fonts, but it is notable that 3 of the texts: 'The one you have all been waiting for...', The Master of Alternative Rock - but not as you know him' and the big 'W' are all distorted and eroded, and the pull quote: 'The odds were against me' is in the same font as the page numbers on the Contents Page and at the bottom of the Double Page Spread.


Personal Accomplishment
 Since the creation of my School Magazine I have increased my understanding of Photoshop throughout my progression in Media Studies. I was particularly proud of my Double Page Spread as I thought it looked really good due to the effects and layout that I had learnt through using Photoshop, something that I wouldn't have been able to do at the Preliminary Task stage in the year.