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

I feel that I have learnt and progressed a lot from my preliminary task of making a school magazine, to making a music magazine. I have learnt more about what should be included and how I should do it. I benefited from things like visiting NME as I learnt lots of tips and tricks of what to include and little things about what does well and what does not.

Preliminary Task In comparison to my music magazine, my school magazine does not look very professional. It looks very simple and is not of a high standard. Although I had the basic understanding of what to include and things I should and should not do, it seems I did not fully understand. There were things that I had not learnt yet which I learn later on while constructing my music magazine. I also did not experiment much with the styles and features of the cover or what was available to me technology wise. I did use Pages but I did not get the full use out of it to make the magazine the best standard it could be, but for what I knew about how to use it and what I could do with it at the time, this was the best I could come up with.

The same goes for my contents page. It does not look like a professional contents page. Looking back on it, in my opinion it looks rushed and as if everything has been “thrown together”. I feel like I just tried to fill up the space by using pictures and I did not think about it.

Music Magazine In comparison to my school magazine, my music magazine looks a lot more professional and of a higher standard. I had a better understanding of how everything works when making my music magazine. When I went to NME they told us tips and tricks like always using a photo that has eye contact with the camera/audience and make the text frame the main image. I tried my best to follow their advice and it makes a big difference to the final product and what it looks like. I also knew more about Pages and how to use that. Doing little things like shadows and changing the opacity of boxes changes it a lot. It’s little things like that which make it more professional and of a higher standard. If I were to do it again I would use a better photo, and a better quality photo because when I put it onto my cover the quality was lost and this effects the overall quality of the cover. I would also change the layout slightly as I feel it is too similar to Kerrang! and the text around the main image does not look right to me so I would change this too.

In comparison to my school contents page, my music magazine contents page looks a lot better. It looks of a high standard and more professional. This contents page does not look rushed like my preliminary task however, I do think the photos in the bottom right hand corner look like they’ve been ‘thrown in’ to fill up space, and do not flow with the rest of the page. If I were to do it again, I would improve this part and make it fit in with everything else. I would probably change the layout of it slightly because I feel I have taken too much inspiration from Kerrang! and they are too similar.