Evaluation - question 7

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

This project began with the production of a preliminary task, this involved simply constructing a front cover and contents page for a fabricated college magazine. This acted as an introduction to photoshop and the processes of creating a magazine. It also helped me begin to understand what is conventional in terms of content/visual aspects of the format, despite the genre being irrelevant to my project.

Now that I have the opportunity to reflect of my previous work and compare it with my more recent final product, it is evident how I have improved throughout the process. The most noticeable difference between my two magazines at first glance would be the lack of cover lines on both front cover and contents page, along with overly simplistic language and subject matter that clearly didn't have much thought put in to it. Whereas the cover lines in my music magazine have been devised in a way that aims to compel and excite the reader, plus I had taken time to brainstorm a variety of ideas that would capture the target audiences attention. This is a good example of how I have acquired organisational and creative skills. A similarity I observed was the way in which I have used a range of corresponding fonts consistently (same applies to the colour scheme), so it seems that I have always understood the significance of establishing an easily identifiable brand identity. In the second section of the project I used technologies such as high quality DSLR cameras and photoshop to a much more efficient degree: I feel as though this comes across visibly due to the fact that the images used in my final product have a more slick, professional look. Plus the lack of text boxes etc within my previous work - back when I was unaware of the many useful features that photoshop had to offer. I feel that I now have a much more extensive knowledge of what is typical in any genre of magazine, for example in my first front cover a medium/long shot has been used, this automatically creates a distance between the audience and cover star, rather than addressing the audience with a close up shot and direct eye contact. I am content with the considerable amount of progress I have exhibited in this process, especially in terms of creativity and becoming well acquainted with necessary technical processes, but the preliminary task was key to developing these skills.