Evaluation Question 7

1. L O O K I N G B A C K A T Y O U R P R E L I M I N A R Y T A S K , W H A T D O Y O U F E E L
Y O U H A V E L E A R N T I N T H E P R O G R E S S I O N F R O M I T T O T H E F U L L
P R O D U C T ?
EVALUATION QUESTION
7

2. PRELIMINARY TASK
• For my preliminary task I created a magazine for
Priestley College called ‘Priestley Buzz’. I produced
a front cover and contents page for this magazine
using Photoshop and Quark Xpress. Through doing
this task I learned a lot about the production and
design of magazine pages. I learned
a lot about codes and conventions of
magazines and tried to apply these to
my product including a masthead,
cover lines and a cover star.

3. WHAT WAS GOOD ABOUT MY PRELIM?
• I think the main thing that I did well in my preliminary task
was the photos that I used. I feel as though the image I
used on my front cover looked professional, although
slightly out of focus, and this is something that I worked
on during my main task, by becoming a lot more familiar
with the settings on the camera and how they can be
used to create different effects. Another good aspect of
my prelim magazine was that I ensured I used as many
codes and conventions as possible, such as including a
barcode and issue information such as issue date. This is
something that I also ensured that I did in my main task
to make my media product look as professional and real
as possible.

4. WHAT DID I IMPROVE?
• The main issue with my preliminary task was that not
all of it looked very professional and coherent.
Some aspects of it looked slightly rushed and not
well thought out/planned. I feel as though this is
definitely something that I worked on when it came
to my main task where I tried to ensure that
everything was done to a much more professional
standard. I felt as though what let my front cover
down the most was the cover lines. The main cover
line did not stand out as much as I wanted it to and
the other cover lines did not have much impact.

5. WHAT DID I IMPROVE?
• This issue was something that I addressed in my
main task, where I ensured that I did everything I
could to make the text on my front cover stand out,
including adding effects such as drop shadows and
strokes, and even changing the opacity of my
background as originally it was hard to read the
cover lines. Another issue was with my contents
page, where the text I used was far too big and
there was not enough articles. Also the articles were
not well aligned. Again, this is something that I paid
a lot of attention to in my main task.

6. WHAT DID I IMPROVE?
• To address this issue I ensured that I used the guidelines
on Quark to align all of my text into columns, which is
something I did not do in my prelim task, and this also
helped in the production of my double page spread. I
also printed my contents page several times during the
production process and compared it to real magazine
contents pages to check the size of the fonts I used was
suitable. I planned a lot in advance to ensure that I had
enough feature and regular articles to use on my
contents page, by looking at several indie music
magazines. This was a good thing as planning was a
weak point for me during my prelim task.

7. WHAT DID I LEARN?
• All in all, looking back at my preliminary task, I feel as
though I have learnt a lot in the progression to the
production of my media product. I feel as though the
main things I learnt was that planning is extremely
important, as well as making sure that I look at everything
I do in detail, and make sure that I have made every
improvement to my pages as possible to ensure that my
media product was exactly what I wanted it to be.