Evaluation question 7 Music Magazine

1. Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task,
what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?

2. From here: to here:
Researching Planning Technology
TIME-
MANAGEMENT

3. When I was given the task to create the front cover and contents page for a
college magazine I was completely oblivious to all the work you need to do to
reach your aim.
Researching
It is very important to know the
market and the audience you are
addressing otherwise you have no
idea how to attract readers and
compete with other magazines.
One step is to get an overview of the
full range of different types offered in
the market of your media product.
After this I took a closer look at the
structure and appearance of certain
magazines to analyse their techniques
to attract readers and to fulfil their
desires.
The audience research is the most
important part of the preproduction
work because without knowing what
the people expect from your
magazine you cannot attract readers
and cannot make a decision about the
magazine’s content.

4. Planning
After all the research you have to start to order
everything you have found out and draw your
conclusions from it.
This means you need to decide on
• the genre you are going to focus
• how often you are going to publish the
magazine
• who your target audience is going to be
• the cover price and
• a working title
You get all these information from your research so if
the former task was done wrong or just shallow the
planning will be dubious.
Having made up one’s mind about the basics
the more detailed work starts. This includes
considering various fonts and colour schemes
as well as thinking about different
photographs. By designing sample sheets you
create a rough outline which works as a guide
for the final product.
When I was given the task to create the front cover and contents page for a
college magazine I was completely oblivious to all the work you need to do to
reach your aim.

5. The most important thing I have learnt since the preliminary task is
that the ground work is essential. If this is done wrong or casually
your work is doomed to fail. I always had the image of a house in my
mind. If the foundation is weak and fragile the house will not stand
long.
It does not matter how much you know about the different
technologies and software which help you to create the final product
as you can always ask someone how to use it or read an instruction.
(As already described in Evaluation Question 6, I learnt a lot about
these programmes and I really appreciate how useful it is to know
how to handle them.) But all your knowledge does not help you if you
have no idea what you are really doing and what you are aiming at.
Creating this media product did not only give me the chance to see
behind the curtains of producing a music magazine and to get an
impression of al the work related with it but also showed me how
important a proper research and planning phase is for every project
or task you get and want to fulfil. It is important to pay enough
attention and time to this step as it makes the other ones so much
easier and faster.