1. Evaluating your first coursework task: Preliminary Task Evaluation
Please write a 500 word and send it to my email address
jakindayini@finchleycatholic.org.uk
You are required to respond to all of the following questions. You must ensure, in
answering these questions, which you write in an analytical way, giving reasons why
you made each decision, rather than just describing what you did.
Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge
conventions of real media products?
Conventions are the ‘rules’ which make magazines recognisable to audiences. E.g.
having the masthead at the top of a magazine front page is a convention. This
question is asking you whether you followed the typical conventions of school
magazines, or whether you made something more original which broke with
conventions. You need to think about what conventions you have seen in
professional products, in terms of design. Referring back to your textual analysis will
help you here.
 Colourful fonts develop
 Picture confidence challenges
 Scenery
 Text features

Q3. How did you attract/address your audience?
This is asking you about the design of your pages, and how the features,
photography and cover lines would help to persuade your target audience to buy
your magazine. It is also asking you to think about the type of language you have
used in the pages - what kind of tone did you use? E.g. did you use standard English
or street slang? Why? Did you mention particular places? Why?
Discussing the use of your models, costumes, and props is a good way of discussing
how you tried to appeal to your audience. Very often the age of your models will be
similar to your target audience, and of course the relative attractiveness of your
models will help to attract your audience as well. Also discuss the importance of
selecting the right kind of fonts in your magazine.
Q4. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing
this product?
Here, you should discuss what you have learnt about photography and using
Photoshop or any other software. When you discuss use of software, remember to
use terminology, referring specifically to program tools (e.g. ‘magnetic lasso’,
‘elliptical marquee’ etc) you used to achieve certain creative goals.
Q5. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your final product?
Finally, evaluate to find out how successful your new magazine is. Make sure you
identify the strengths and weaknesses of each part. Focus on:
- Photography (and lighting)
- Layout
- Colour scheme
- Use of text/images
 What aspects of your magazine were you pleased with?

2.  What problems did you encounter?
 How did you resolve these problems?
 How could you improve your project?
 If you were to repeat the task, what would you differently?