Through creating preliminary and main magazine products, the author has learned many important lessons about magazine design conventions. For the preliminary task, created in just a few hours, the author lacked understanding of things like appropriate fonts, layouts, cover designs, and content pages. However, with more research, planning, and experience put into the main product, the author was able to create a more professional magazine that implemented important conventions like appealing fonts, color schemes, full-page cover photos, and content-rich internal pages. Comparing the preliminary and main products shows how the author's skills in editing, design, research and planning have significantly improved over time.

1. Looking at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to your full product?
Immediately the first thing I must have to say is that creating a professional magazine is not
something that can be done within a day. Hours of research must take place along with a larger
amount of hours editing and creating the magazine to make it perfect. Compare all my magazines
and you can see how I’ve clearly improved upon with time and more experience. My preliminary
task was created within quite frankly must have just been a maximum of two hours. My main
product which was created previously took far longer however I was able to manage time more
effectively this time and managed to create a product not only appeals more but shows how my
understanding of conventions of magazines has improved. When creating a magazine, a
numerous amount of conventions must be implemented to your product otherwise the target
audience simply will not be interested in reading it. Creating a very simplistic but professional
magazine is always likely to be successful along with the correct content readers would like to
read.
The use of more appealing fonts, colour schemes and a better layout gives a better image of the
magazine. My preliminary task consisted of creating a magazine that wasn’t at all appealing, it
was very dull and lacked quality. My main product which was created before showed how I was
able to pick up on these issues however this was understanding was not fully shown as compared
to the final product I have created now.
Of course not only has my editing skills improved, my noticing skills and research & planning skills
have been improved which can be used in many different projects for the future. I am able to
successfully pick up and learn different conventions of not just only magazines but other different
types of media that can be used for A2.

2. Masthead
My preliminary task had a very basic masthead that was positioned at the top of the page.
The font was odd and the colour used made it difficult to view properly because of my low
level of understanding magazines designs and conventions, I opted for the gradient
background which doesn’t seem very appealing. Then for my main task I had designed a
very basic masthead and positioned it in a very conventional way. Through research of other
magazines, I felt the masthead needed to stand out and inform the readers of the
magazine. It also needed to be very noticeable and easy to recognise as it would be sitting
next to other magazines on a shelf. My preliminary masthead was simple and add no effects
to it, essentially it was simply one font and a gradient background created on Indesign.
Through the use of Photoshop, I was able to create a better masthead that had less space in
between text and allowed me to select the thickness of the outline. It also has a red
background which blended in with the rest of my magazine colour scheme. Another thing
that can be easily noticed is how my preliminary masthead is all lowercase whereas through
research of other magazines, it was quite obvious capital letters is a better choice.
A tag line was also added to my masthead to give it a little catchphrase, this can help to
build reputation and make it more known. This wasn’t used in my preliminary task since I
had no idea this was commonly used by magazines.

3. Front cover
For my preliminary task, I decided to go for a black, white and blue colour scheme as compared to
the conventional black, white and red for my main task. The preliminary task also shows how I
lacked knowledge and understanding of magazine conventions, the front cover had very little on
the page and the main photo was of two people looking away. Of course after some research I
knew that my main task had to consist of a lot of more content on the front cover as well as a
interesting main photograph to attract my audience. Another issue could be raised with my
preliminary task as I had very little understanding of what fonts to be used as I opted for some
strange fonts that didn’t blend well with my photograph especially the cover line. You can clearly
see how I have managed to learn far more about magazines front covers through the progression
of this project especially those little details that make a whole difference.

4. Contents page
Following on with my black, white and blue colour scheme, this was also used on my preliminary
task which can only seem coincidental. Again the same strange font was used in an attempt to
attract readers but its clearly visible that the page lacked content! This was an issue that needed to
be dealt with especially through research and planning of my main task. Real media content pages
have plenty of content so readers knew what was featured in the magazine. Having a lot of more
content on the page allows a more professional layout which featured a header, footer and page
number. None of which was used in my preliminary task. The font used can be compared easily, my
preliminary task had a more funky type of font whereas my main task had a more appealing font
that made my magazine look more professional. I also decided to include an editors note as I
wanted to challenge at least one convention of the magazines in an attempt to create something
different along with an advert which is commonly seen in real magazines.