The document discusses what the student learned from their preliminary magazine task to the full production. Some key learnings included: 1) Research is fundamental to understand the target audience and genre conventions. 2) Planning and time management are important to stay on track. 3) Photography skills like lighting and shot composition can make images more professional. 4) Understanding magazine design conventions and software tools improves the final product.

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

2. Planning and Preparation
• During the preliminary task, I learnt that research is a fundamental part of production as
you have to learn about what your target audience want and the kind of things that I
need to put in the magazine in order to make it fit into my genre.
• I was able to use my research and planning to help influence my ideas for my magazine
production. The research enabled me to see what kind of magazine I should be making
and the kind of things that should be in my magazine. Throughout the production, I found
it useful that I could refer to my research and planning to help me come up with key
ideas.
• I feel that since the preliminary task, I understood more about how research can help
influence my ideas, and about how important it is to have in depth research into the
magazine you are trying to create.

3. Organisation of Time
• During the preliminary task I feel that I did not really have a good organisation of
time, and that some of it was rushed, therefore, this time around making the real product
I was aware of how important organisation is.
• Therefore when making my real product I created an in-depth time plan so that I was
able to see what I had to do, and when I had to do it, by giving myself several
deadlines, however throughout production it was difficult to keep to these deadlines as I
did the process differently to the way I had planned too, however I found the time plan
useful to keep track of what I had done and what I hadn’t.

4. Photography Skills
• During the preliminary task I only had a few shots to work with, however I knew how to use
the digital SLR camera pretty well, and I knew about all the different kinds of
settings, however during the main production I was able to develop my skills by using
lights and gels to make the photos look more professional.
• I also used a different type of shot as I did not want her looking straight into the camera
as I wanted to challenge the ideology that the model had to be looking into the
camera, and I am pleased with the way the images have come out as they look
professional and the lighting helps make the front cover look more upmarket.
• For the double page spread and photos on the contents page I did not use any specific
lighting however I am still pleased with the way the images have turned out.
Music
Student magazine
magazine photos
photo

5. Conventions
• Through the preliminary task I learnt several things about the way magazines are
structured and a lot of the different conventions that are used in these magazines.
Through the preliminary task I learnt about these conventions and through doing my
research and planning for my real production I was able to see other magazines of my
genre and see how they used these conventions, for example the use of the masthead
and the fonts, and also the type of things that should be in my magazine.
• From the preliminary task I feel that I was able to improve on the conventions that I
already knew about, for example making the contents page more laid out with the use
of three columns, and the way that I laid out the front cover, as in my real production
they look a lot more up-market and are laid out a lot better than in my preliminary task.

6. Technology
• During the preliminary task I was very new to the software that we used to create our
magazines therefore this time round I was more aware of how to use the software and
the things that I could do on them.
• For example with Adobe photoshop I was more aware of how to manipulate the image
and change certain effects on it like the exposure and contrast. With adobe InDesign I
understood more about how it worked and how to lay out my contents page and
double page spread, however this was also easier due to my research and planning, as I
had a clearer idea of how it should have been done.
This image was created by using
layers and the magnetic lasso tool.
I also edited the background
into black and white to make
the main image of the celebrity
be the main focus.
These 2 are the main
tools I felt I learnt how
to use successfully
during this project.

7. What have I learnt?
• Throughout the coursework project the main thing I learnt is how much research is
needed to create a magazine, and how research and planning is a fundamental
process in magazine production, as throughout this project I was constantly referring to
my research to make sure that I was keeping to the conventions used in my genre of
magazine and the way that I was using them.
• I also learnt about how much planning is needed to make something like this, as it is
difficult to decide what to do, what to write about and how to lay something out without
having your planning to refer back too.