QUESTION 7

JOSH MURPHY

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

Preliminary taskAfter the completion of my music magazine, Iwas able to look back on my preliminary taskand appreciate just how much my skills haveimproved. Every aspect of my music magazinewas a massive improvement on my initial task.My first magazine was dull, boring and didn’tstand out at all.

Research of other magazines

First of all, I went about doing research before tackling the music magazine. I did not do this before creating my preliminary task. The research included purchasing another music magazine with a similar style as my planned magazine, a modern rock magazine, for this I used Kerrang! I studied the style of the magazine, the font and images used as well as the colour scheme. I created a list of codes and conventions based on what I noted. Simply by following a few of the things I managed to list I was able to create a much more professional looking magazine than my preliminary had been, which didn’t follow the basic rules of a professional magazine.

Comparison

Looking at both of the images you can tell just how much my skills have progressed, everything has improved from the image quality and the cropping to the text and its effects.

Photoshop & Quark

As well as this, my skills at using various software has improved, I have gained experience in using Photoshop and Quark, using these new skills enabled me to implement various effects and styles I didn’t know about whilst making my preliminary. These include adding effects to words, editing pictures (Removing skin imperfections, changing the tone and much more) plus a whole range of things on the programme Quark. Almost every time I attempted to do something on my magazine I discovered a new, and better way to achieve the luck of a professional magazine. Each time improving on my original idea for my magazine, which changed constantly as I went on because I was constantly learning new, better ways to do things.

Editing Text

I was also picking up new techniques on what I could do to things such as texts and images, and how to manipulate and edit them to make them look better and appear more professional that originally intended. The text used on my preliminary task was basic, simple and didn’t stand out of the page. I used simple small black or light blue writing for my magazine sub-headlines. In my new magazine I learnt that I was much better to use stand out fonts and colours which grab the readers attention. I managed to do this by adding a stroke to my bold, colourful writing, I used a similar style blue for some of my sub-headings but making the words a lot larger, the stroke also makes them stand out better, this made my magazine look more attractive and appealing because it was all bigger and brighter.

Reflection

Reflecting on my preliminary task I can say that it does not look professional, because I did not take time to do market research on other magazines which also appeal to my target audience, nor did I study what my target audience need, a questionnaire which I gave to 20 people all within my target audience enabled me to create the magazine specifically to suit there needs. This included using the most popular and appealing colour scheme, and what bands my target audience are most interested in, and which bands they are least interested in. Using this information I knew not to include certain things which would discourage them from perhaps being interested in my magazine.

Research of Publishers

I have also learnt the names of various publishing companies through the market research I undertook. These publishers include Bauer and IPC Media, who publish rock magazines like Q, and KERRANG!. After studying both of the mentioned publishers I decided that Bauer was more appropriate for my magazine as it produces more rock music magazines.

Photos

To take my photos I used a Fujifilm Finepix s2950 camera for the first time, before using this I had never used such a complex camera before. I learnt various techniques which enabled me to capture good quality images, and various camera angles.