1. WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT
FROM THE PROGRESSION TO THE FINAL
PRODUCT?
Evaluation Question 7

2. PRELIM TASK
The first thing that we had to do on the course
was have a go at producing a school
magazine. To do this I used programmes such
as publisher in order to get that magazine
layout that I was looking for. However, you can
tell from the pictures below that I lacked a
certain touch of creativity which I feel held me
back from making it look even remotely like a
magazine, never mind who it was targeted at.
The main purpose of this task was not to
create something special, but I did feel a little
bit disheartened by the finished result. This
did not matter though, as I wanted to just get
a feel for using digital programmes in order
to spill ideas onto a page ad organize them
accordingly.

3. INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE SOFTWARE
Although I only used publisher to create my school magazines, I was
further introduced to two very advanced pieces of creative software
that would enable me to create a product of professional quality if used
correctly. I took advantage of these two programmes and quickly set
myself the task to learn how to use them in the right way so that I could
manipulate pictures from my photo shoot to make them ‘acceptable’ to
use in my magazine. The first programme I learnt how to use fairly well
was Photoshop. We were introduced to the spot healing tool which
allowed me to touch up the models skin and I further went on the lighten
and darken the pictures with colour correction to make them ‘glow’ and
look good on the page. The second piece of creative software that I
soon learnt how to use was InDesign. I am glad that I did in fact learn
how to use this piece of software because I feel that it is so much more
advanced than just publisher and I was able to create a layout including
borders, margins and gutters so that I could use page furniture sensibly.

4. DRAFTING
To me, drafting was particularly important. This is
because producing drafts is very helpful when it
comes to identifying problems with the product and
where potential improvements could be made to
further enhance my product.

5. CONSTANT AWARENESS
By constant awareness, I mean that I kept constantly aware of who my target
audience where and what the genre of my magazine was, but also how I wanted the
magazine to be presented. For me I had to ensure that my magazine was acceptable
and appealing to my audience because if it wasn’t then I knew that my magazine
would not attract buyers and receive a bad name for itself. I also had to make sure
that I was producing a hip hop magazine, and did not venture out into different
genres of music and include them in my magazine because somebody who enjoys hip
hop would not like to pick up a hip hop magazine and feel like they are reading a
classical magazine. I feel by being constantly aware of these two things I was able to
conform to the general conventions of a hip hop magazine while keeping it look very
slick and professional rather than tacky.

6. MARKETING AND ADVERTISING
This was a very important part of my project because I had
to make sure that I had completed sufficient research in
order to make sure that I could properly advertise and
market my magazine to the public.

7. OVERVIEW
Overall, I feel like I have learnt that the production of a music magazine is a lot more
difficult than it may seem. By this I mean that there are a lot of stages involved and a
lot of work goes into not only composing the pages but the background work and the
tools that are needed to organise the page. Completing this task has made me learn
that media is taken very seriously and by taking it seriously myself I have been able
to create a Music Magazine that I feel would be able to compete with some of the
top magazines on sale today.