Learning Process

Looking back at my preliminary task, I feel like I understand the conventions of magazines much more because of the analysis of many music magazines, while with school magazines, it was harder to find on search engines such as Google so I had less inspiration. I now understand how magazines use different features and techniques to draw the audience in although I understood some aspects when creating my school magazine, I thoroughly understood all of the techniques used by magazines when creating my music magazine. I’ve learnt how to make my magazines look more professional, probably due to my lack of skills when it came to programs such as Photoshop and InDesign when creating my school magazine.

When creating my preliminary task, I found InDesign and Photoshop difficult and confusing as I’d hardly used InDesign and Photoshop before but now I have learnt new things such as sorting out the layout of the page, importing images and text. Although I had used Photoshop much more than I’d used InDesign, I found my edited images in my music magazine were much better than the edited images used in my preliminary task as I had a longer period of time to find out about different tools that I did not previously know about. My images could be much better edited now, as I learnt about tools such as smudge tool and the lasso tool. By learning about the software, I feel that my standard of work has improved.

My photo shoot for my music magazine also went much better than in my preliminary task. The reason for this is because I had more time to contact specific people whom I thought fit the image of my magazine, I had more time to plan what shot types to use and what impressions they’d give to my audience by the angles, body language and shot type, I had more time to consider the location and I had more time to consider the mis-en-scene which was not even considered in the preliminary task.

I’ve also learnt how to download new, interesting fonts from dafont.com, increasing the visual appeal of my magazine. As well as the complexity of my page layout, I’ve learnt to use layers successfully within Photoshop. I feel I have used more variety of techniques than I did in my preliminary task.

I think that I have developed my critical evaluation skills when it comes to my work, I have widened my media vocabulary and I think my evaluations are much more thorough now rather than when I was evaluating my preliminary task. I have also found new ways of presenting my evaluations so they are more exciting to read and useful to the reader.

I have also developed my research skills as I thoroughly looked for inspiration when creating my music magazine, while in preliminary task, I evaluated a few school magazines but took no inspiration from them as they were not similar to what I wanted to achieve. I have improved on recording my research so all the research I have done is on my blog to help gather and develop my idea while on preliminary task, I didn’t record a lot of research as I found it difficult to find inspiration.

I have also developed skills when analysing other media products, I have learnt to look for the purpose of the media product, the audience, the media institution behind it along with the visuals. It helps me understand how to connect with your target audience, how to fulfil the purpose and the importance of having a clear purpose and sticking to it.

Overall my understanding of many software's has improved greatly because at the start I had barely used software such as InDesign and now I have produced a better looking, more professional magazine because of my development of skills. I also feel that I have a greater understanding and knowledge on how to produce a magazine, especially as my music magazine looks much more interesting than my preliminary task and links much better to my research. You can clearly tell the improvement and development between my preliminary task and music magazine