My skills in magazine production have greatly improved from my preliminary college magazine to my full music magazine production. For the full production, I conducted more in-depth research, created more detailed planning documents, and selected models and locations that better fit the genre. This extensive planning made the construction phase quicker and easier. The finished full production magazine displayed higher quality layout, design, photography, and content compared to the preliminary task, showing my increased understanding and abilities in media design and production.

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

2. Preliminary Task(College Magazine)

3. Full Production Magazine(Double Page Spread)

4. Research & Planning

5. My skills in media production have developed rapidly since beginning this new product (music magazine). Firstly, the research I carried out into other magazine designs was much more in depth than on the prelim task. This meant that the ideas and changes I made to my magazine design as I planned it where informed by professional magazines with similar target audiences to my own such as Billboard and Vibe.When designing my product I planned it on paper using a flat planning technique. This helped me to include detail in my plans including what the articles were about on my contents page and what images and poses I would use and also help me to plan outfits to suit the style of my magazine. The flat plans that I created were much more in depth than those created for the prelim task, therefore allowing me to plan more of the finer details for my magazine. I then analyzed these flat plans on a Prezi.

6. Contents PageThese are my flat plans for my music magazine. They are much more detailed than my college magazine flat plans, enabling my plans to assist more in the construction section.Double Page SpreadFront Cover

7. Also, when selecting my models I went through a thorough process of finding a model which would suit the genre of music I was trying to recreate with my magazine. This therefore made selecting costume, make-up and props much easier as they suited the genre already before the rest of the design took place. These models which I chose also were more likely to have clothes already which suited the genre meaning they were less likely to have to purchase some saving on the cost of my production.I also carried out detailed risk and hazard assessments of my photo shoot locations which was not present in my prelim task. This made the whole production on my music magazine much more safety orientated and scrupulous when selecting the locations. I also planned my article draft in full and received feedback from my models to improve the quality of my writing. This helped to make my double page spread as professional as possible considering this was not part of the preliminary task. Finally, my design ideas were posted in a Prezi which included font research, costume, make-up, model choices etc. this was not present in my prelim task. By carrying out this section in my planning I made the construction part much quicker and easier as many of the choices were already made for my magazine and only tweaks had to be done to improve the design after the elements had been put in place.

8. Construction

9. Preliminary Task(College Magazine)

10. Full Production Magazine(Front Cover and Contents Page)

11. Full Production Magazine(Double Page Spread)

12. From the comparison between my two products there is a clear difference between the quality of the design and content. Throughout this unit my construction skills have increased the most. This has been aided with my confidence growing in my graphic design projects in my other subject at college. This has aided the quality of the page layout, design and colours used for my magazine; resulting in a higher quality of finished product which could potentially be sold in store. I have increased my knowledge and understanding of how media products should work and appear and I feel this is evident in the standard of work I have produced my full production music magazine task to. For the page layout of my magazine I experimented more with the use of varied fonts as well as the use of the text adjustment tools such as leading, curing and alignment, particularly when placing sell lines on my front cover as, from my research, the leading is usually reduced to provide more space on the page for more information and selling points towards the audience. Also I had the carefully plan and construct the image to text ratio to make my product as well balanced as possible because too many images or too much text could have made my magazine look unprofessional or essay-like.

13. The composition of my photography has increased two-fold due to my greater understanding of the technological equipment and how to use it correctly in-situ. I have also experimented more with costume design, make-up and props used as well as lighting and positions for my models to take shape in my photo shoots. All of these factors have helped to increase the creativity and professionalism of my final product.Finally, the content of my magazine had to be much improved such as the amount of features on the contents page had to increase. The comparison from the amount of features the contents page of the college magazine has and the music magazine is great. This shows the development of my work and the content. I also feel I managed my time better with this piece of work and completed each of the tasks to a higher, more adequate standard than the preliminary task by using internet tools more creatively to present the posts on myblogs and the software I used to increase the quality of my work.