The student created a basic cover for their preliminary magazine task as they were still learning InDesign. For their final product, they incorporated lessons learned to create a more stylized magazine cover with a zoomed in main image, varied fonts for text, and intentional color choices. They also expanded their contents page to a double-page spread with stylistic elements like borders and varied fonts, sections, and features to better resemble real music magazines. The development of their magazine design over time demonstrated learning key conventions for creating a professional looking media product.

3. The Preliminary Task was my first experience in using InDesign. I believe this is very
apparent when looking at my cover, which is very basic. I wasn’t even able to rescale or
crop the image as I found the frames far too fiddly.
Fortunately, through my time working on my final product, I grew accustomed to how
the frame worked in relation to the image and the cover you see at the bottom
features a heavily zoomed in image. In my cover, I also experimented more with text,
choosing to give different fonts to my sell lines on the left.
There are only two different fonts used on the cover of my preliminary design, one of
which is exclusive to the masthead. This was intended to create a sophisticated style
but resulted in merely looking plain.
One thing which did remain consistent throughout the magazines development was
the desire to keep the number of colours used low. The colours on my preliminary
task all come from different areas of the main image used (either my model’s shirt,
the column or the wall) or the Haydon Logo. The only colour on my final product is
red – everything else is black or white, including my model’s clothing. This was an
intentional choice to create a stylish look to my magazine after examining other
existing products.
Analysis of existing media products also convinced me that making my main sell line
much, much bigger was also the right choice. The Preliminary Task shows you
something like how it originally was, before I looked at somepublished magazines.

5. The development of the two contents pages is where I believe you can see the biggest example of progress.
One of the first differences noticed has to be the expansion from a single page into a double page spread. This was a
choice made in order to reflect real music magazines and allow me to have more space to utilise. While some music
magazines do have a single page for a contents page, I decided to use a double because I felt it looked the most
impressive, visually.
On my final product you can see the house style in place – the pale red border with red colouring. No form of
anything resembling a house style is present in my Preliminary task, only the continuation of the same fonts. The
final Product’s design is a lot more exciting and willing to use more fonts and sizes in order to look interesting.
There are also many more features on my final contents page – the date, subscription details and sections to name
some. I continued to use the Editor’s note , still written by Edd. The larger structure of my newer contents page
allowed me to include a lot more features in order to resemble a real music magazine product. Aside from the
Editor’s note, the preliminary features none of these.
The use of text and images are very different. The Preliminary task contents used the single font – the only
alteration being the red text for the listings. My contents page utilised different colours to place emphasis on certain
points and ultimately control the reader’s gaze.
As an alternate to using the photos in the columns, I limited my
images to a designated section that took up around quarter of the
page. This kept them confined and looked better visually, as there
was an order.

6. 
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I have learnt more about the structure of
existing media products and how to use their
conventions in my own product
How to develop a design that is consistent,
stylish and visually interesting
The importance of combining variation with
simplicity
Finally, how to create a magazine that looks
professional and could be seen in a
newsagents or the like.