1. QUESTION 7
Looking back at your preliminary task,
what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?

2. Preliminary Progression
Evidentially looking at my preliminary work before the
production of my final magazine I have come a long way in my
use of different software e.g. Photoshop which I had never
used before the production of my college magazine and my
final music magazine, the skills that I have learnt are of a much
more intelligent level to which I was aware of when producing
preliminary work but doing this task has allowed me to see
myself what progress I have made with my own work
throughout research and production itself.
Throughout the progression of my work into the music
magazine I have used research into my audience and market
through primary and secondary research, this includes using
survey monkey to produce a questionnaire in order to see what
my target market would be and how to satisfy them. I also
carried out an interview with a potential audience member for
my magazine and using these two skills to gain information was
a quick and simple way of making decisions about my
magazine. A secondary task that I did to gain information was
also researching online to similar magazines to see what I could
do to make mine better or to compare the look of them to
mine to see if I am following the conventions of a popular
media magazine.

3. Planning
When planning my magazine I produced a pitch of what my
magazine was called, what it would include and colour scheme etc. I
presented this to the class and got feedback from my potential
audience on what they thought of my ideas and what to change
about the magazine. From doing this it allowed me to change my
colour scheme which I am glad about as my colour scheme featured
on my original pitch contained red which one person said would
make it too much like already mass produced popular magazine
NME so I changed it to a colour scheme that nobody had really seen
before or would recognise as another brand. Producing a style
sheet, flat plans and layouts allowed me to know where I was going
with the production process and be confident on what my magazine
was going to look like so I wouldn’t have difficulty when figuring out
the rest, it provided a plan for me to follow and improve along the
way which was useful and I have stuck to my chosen layouts as far
as I can tell. Planning photographs was quite vague for me as I felt
that it would be useful to have a contact sheet and then select the
most suitable choices to use for my magazine from there. It allowed
me to see all the photos that I had taken together on one page so
that I wouldn’t make a mistake in choosing the most suitable and
best quality. The limitation of this I found was that when looking at
the photos it was hard to tell some apart from each other as they
were quite a similar camera angle and position of the band.

4. Language in Production
I have explored the ways that language is used on a cover of a
magazine and the technical terms to use to address each
feature, this has taught me a lot on how a magazine is made
and published which was a huge leap from my preliminary task
to my final music issue that I have produced. I feel that without
learning these skills to pull your audience into your magazine
and having thought about each feature of the magazine
carefully in my preparation work that I would not have made
the progress that I have. Being allowed more time on
production with my production task gave me more of an
opportunity to learn new things about how to use Dafont and
Photoshop to make my magazine different and better quality
than the first that I have produced. I feel now that I can be
much more confident when using this software’s that I have
used throughout the project and would be able to produce
another piece of better quality if I took more time to look at
different elements but am very happy with my progress from
my preliminary task.
During the production period of my magazine gave me the
opportunity to acquire new skills in technologies and
techniques within software and hardware. These included my
skills developed on Photoshop with how to add text and how to
grab colours from other placed within the page shown in order
to employ mise-en-scene into my magazine which would make
it more individual and tie it all together. I learnt how to format
the page in order to get a coloured background and to add
overlay onto fonts to emphasise them clearly.

5. Contents Page Review
I was not fully happy with the outcome
of my contents page that I produced as
my preliminary task of my college
magazine as I feel that it wasn’t
thought out and I didn’t have
knowledge at all as to what to include
on the page, the huge leap that I have
taken from then to the final product
now is evident in the quality and even
the use of a background colour and
different fonts, the images that I have
used are of a better quality and there
are more than what was featured on
the preliminary task, this is more
appealing to the audience as they will
want visual media as well as written to
catch their eye and initially interest
them in the issue.

6. Lessons Learnt: Evaluating
Activity Technologies Skills Lessons
Photographs Canon camera and location of Composition, camera The first photos that I took I used a different setting on the camera than the ones that
photographs angles, lighting came out well, I used a manual setting but by realising the bad quality of lighting
switched to automatic which allowed me to have the flash working and the shutter
speed was quicker. The backgrounds of the pictures were quite busy and distracted
from the main image, although I could not edit this out I made the lighting darker in
the background of the pictures so that it would not be distracting. Some of the
pictures that I was taking were not suitable for a main image as the camera angle was
not face on to the band, I then went closer to the lead singer and took a picture from
above which got the medium shot that I was looking for.
Editing Photoshop Colour grabbing, image When I first started when producing preliminary tasks I used colours that were not
photographs for adjustments, colour included in the photo taken and colours appeared different from each other whereas
when I started production on my music magazine I discovered the use of a colour
magazine adjustments, font
grabbing tool which helped me keep colours co-ordinating and also grab colours from
extracting, blending
the photo itself so that they all matched together nicely and made it a better quality
editing
cover and other pages too. I also learnt to control myself when it comes to editing the
pictures and thought more about the genre of the magazine and how the edit of the
pictures would suit the genre of my music magazine which I did not think about when
producing my college magazine in the preliminary task. I used a brown overlay on sub
images to make them look more old and individual to fit with the rest of the colours
used.
Extracting fonts Dafont.com Downloading font and I chose to use a font that was already featured on the software that I was using when
from elsewhere applying it to magazine I produced my preliminary task. When I discovered that I could take a font from the
pages internet that would be individual I chose one that would be suitable for the magazine
and constantly used it inside which meant downloading it onto the software that I
was using, this allowed me to gain an advantage on other magazines by using a font
that hadn’t been used before. I didn’t keep my font constant within my sub headings
on my mock up contents page whereas keeping it constant with the front page and
my contents page made the page look more official and easier to read so the eyes did
not have to adjust to different font sizes and fonts on the contents page which could
prove difficult.