1. 7) Looking back at your preliminary
task, what do you feel you have
learnt from the progression of it to
the full product?

2. Stages in making magazine
• Research-Audience, Market
• Planning- Pitch, style sheets, photography plans, flat
plans, draft layouts
• Pre Production-Taking images
• Production- Image manipulation, text
manipulation, layout manipulation

3. Research
In my preliminary task of the front cover for the College, I feel that my skills have developed
a lot. For that task we had to do no planning, which made it difficult as we were unsure
what to include on the magazine front cover. As we did no planning we knew little about
common conventions, and colour schemes etc. so our college front covers weren’t very
developed. So I have learnt that planning is an essential to making the magazine.
We researched many of the publishers for magazines so we learnt what magazines were
owned by what publishers. I found this very interesting and helpful as it helped us to find
out what types of magazines get published and by whom. This then helped me develop my
magazine so that it would get published and distributed.
I knew for my preliminary task that the audience would be around 16- 19 year olds, so I
didn’t have to do any research or research any competitive magazines. I have definetly
developed from then as I have learnt to carry out audience research, market research, a
survey and a interview.
We did in depth analysis of 3 front covers, double page spread and contents pages, this was
very helpful as it helped us learn the common conventions of magazines eg the masthead
at the top of the page. It also helped us develop are skills at the mise en scene of the image
which then helped us when we were creating our own magazines.

4. Print screens of some of the research I did:

5. Planning
As I didn’t plan anything for my preliminary task, I have learnt a lot through the planning
stage. I have learnt that planning is a essential, as it makes it easier to manage your time, and
to know what you are doing next with the magazine.
I did a pitch, this was very important as it allowed me to write down in detail what the
genre of my magazine will be. The
price, the release date, and the audience
etc. This was good as then I had my basis
of my magazine that I could them work up
from. From this pitch I then presented a
similar pitch to my peers, and got feedback
from then. This then allowed me to do
more planning from what they had said.

6. I carried out a style sheet. I think this was very beneficial and it taught me to expreriment with
colours to see which looks good and what works. I did lots of different shades of colours, so I got
the exact colour that I wanted. I also tried out different fonts that I could use, and I got a mood
board of existing images to help me see what kind of shot and image I want for my front cover.
The final font that I did use was not
included on my style sheet, but my
style sheet helped me learn what kind
of font that I wanted. When it came
to production and text manipulation I
went on da-font website and found
the font that I wanted.
My simplistic coour scheme of white,
maroon and black were chose on my
style sheet, which shows style sheets
are effective and useful.

7. I carried out draft page layouts and photography plans. They were very useful
and effective as it saved me time planning it once I had taken the pictures etc.
However, some of my images are different to what I had planned in my
photography plans. This is because when I was taking the photos ones that I
had planned hadn’t worked out as effectively as I thought, so I changed them
to make the magazine work.
This shows that
my photography
plans haven’t
been
These are very similar! Showing plans are
affective, as I
effective. My plans are not in colour because
changed the
I hadn’t decided my colour scheme then,
shot.

8. Production
This is the aesthetics of the magazine. - making things look attractive, through
manipulation.
For my preliminary task and the main production I used photo-shop. The first
time I had ever used it was for the college magazine. I feel like I have learnt a lot
about photo-shop, and that helped me get a better end result. This is obvious
from my end results.
Photo-shop is the best photo editor there is to use so I used it to get a high
quality result.
I went on da-font.com to get texts that were attractive and what I wanted, and I
learnt how to download them to photoshop. There is a large variety of fonts to
choose so it helped make my magazine look individual and original.

9. As you can see my skills in
Preliminary to Final photo-shop have developed
through out the project. Out of
my front cover, double page
spread and my contents page I
am most unhappy with my
front cover.
It is a lot more developed than
my preliminary task. I had
edited more of the image for a
more effective and
professional look. Unlike the
college magazine I have made
sure that the text doesn’t
cover the models face, as that
is unprofessional and
unattractive.
I have also stuck to one main colour instead of two- ‘blue and red’ and I learnt that it looks
more professional and stylish. I have kept the obvious conventions the same such as
masthead at the top, and bar code and price at the bottom left. I have also kept a simplistic
plain background.
However, I still think that my front cover would have been better if the background wasn’t
so minimalistic in plain white, as I think it makes my front cover look slightly immature.
Other than that I have learnt a lot about photo-shop and what looks good and effective.

10. My preliminary task contents page
was very rushed and looked
unprofessional and amateur. I have
changed everything for my real
contents page, and have resulted in a
contents page that looks like it could
be from a real magazine. The only
thing I kept the same was the use of a
matching colour scheme. The colour
scheme of blue and red was eye
catching and teenagers would
probably find it attractive. I changed it
to maroon as young adults would find
that colour attractive.
I learnt about the image rotation tool, and slightly I learnt a lot about the layout of
turned one image. This is appealing as it could magazines. The preliminary task
connote to young adults wilder side, and their way or contents page is very simplistic and
going against typical conventions. boring, but I changed it so there is lot
of eye catching images, and the
I also learnt how to make my image black and features titles are bold and easy to
white, which was different to all my other coloured read. I added a big banner across the
images. bottom, full of the current number
1’s, appealing to the target audience.