1. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it
to the full product?
From looking back at my preliminary task, I feel as if I have come a long way since I first started to
make my fiction school magazine.
There are many things which I have learnt from making my final coursework piece and these are
lessons that are priceless. If I had known these techniques and features before I started my
preliminary task, then it wouldn’t have taken me three days to complete.
The main thing that I think I have learnt is how InDesign works. Switching from Photoshop (A piece
of software that I was comfortable with using), to Adobe InDesign (Which was previously unheard
of) was a big step for me. I had grown comfortable with using Photoshop for pieces of coursework
for not only media, but English (When creating flyers for campaigns). It would be a lie if I said that I
wasn’t shaken by it, because I truly was.
However, I feel as if I have come a long way since then. When I first started with my preliminary task,
my skills and use of shortcuts were almost nothing. I had no idea what half of the features meant
and I was stumped as to how I could use certain shortcuts. I had no knowledge of this software
previous to my preliminary task.
Compared to my preliminary task, my final coursework piece is something of a masterpiece.
Obviously it isn’t, but the change in quality from my preliminary task to my final task is immense. For
my preliminary task I used fuzzy pictures and silly text fonts. I didn’t group pictures and text. I was
unaware of the shortcuts that I could take to make life a lot easier when creating a magazine. My
final preliminary task was not something to be overly proud of, but that goes to show how much
change there was in moving to a new piece of software.
My final coursework piece can maybe be improved a little bit – but for now, I feel as if I have done a
decent enough job of creating a magazine to be proud of it.
There is a lot of knowledge needed to be able to use software packages like InDesign successfully,
and having worked with the software since near enough the start of the school year, I can
confidently say that my skills have improved, my knowledge has widened and my confidence has
grown. This will make editing my magazine that little bit easier as well, because I will be able to
identify things that I want to change very quickly and I will have the capability to change them too.