Looking back at her preliminary college magazine task, the author learned several important lessons that improved her final music magazine product. She realized she had not properly researched the audience or market for the college magazine. For the music magazine, she researched the target audience and created a pitch. She also planned articles, photos, and layouts more thoroughly. The final product had more professional design elements like drop shadows and organized sections compared to the preliminary task.

1. Looking back at my preliminary task, what do I
feel I have learnt in the progression from it to
the full product?
By Brigit Gunton

2. Front Covers:
Preliminary task – College Magazine Final product – Music magazine
Some of the
text is on top The text is
of the same bolder, with a
colour. drop shadow
added so it is
easier to read.
The
background
There are
has lots of
more
colours going
professional
on which
details added
makes it hard
such as the
to add text on
issue number,
top of.
date and price.
The lighting on
the image isn’t The
very well photograph is
planned, as more thought
you can see out, with
the reflection better lighting,
on the background
background. and props
Also the image (such as
is perhaps too cigarette) to
close up for a portray target
magazine audience.
cover.

3. Contents page:
Preliminary task – College Magazine Final product – Music magazine
Small added
detail that
shows it is
more
thought out
such as the
quote from
the
interview.
The layout of the college magazine isn’t very neat and there is no real order of columns, with text and pictures organised and incidentally blank space,
where as the final product, is colour coded for each section and in one neat column making it easy to read. Also the contributors section at the bottom
adds something different and makes it stand out from normal contents, as it makes it feel more personal to see the people who make it.

4. The stages I went through when
creating my music magazine...
Research
• Audience
• Market
Planning
• Pitch
• Layouts/flatplans
• Stylesheet
• Planning photographs
• Planning articles
•
Production
• Image manipulation (more complex such as smudging and sharpening)
• Text manipulation (e.g. Drop shadows)
• Layout design & manipulation
However I didn’t go through the same processes when creating my college magazine. As I missed
out both stages of research, audience and market. I didn’t create a pitch or plan my articles. I
simply drew a rough sketch of some flat plans, went out took the photos and put it all together
whilst making the headlines up. I also used simple photo editing tools such as the brightness and
contrast levels.

5. Main Tasks...
Activity Technologies Skills Lessons
Photographs Using a camera Composition, props and The first set of photos for my college
angles magazine were taken with not much
thought gone into what the photo was
representing. Such as the location, the
clothing and the model used. Where as
when it came to my second photos, I
chose the character to fit my genre and
image, then added props such as a
cigarette. I also considered things such
as the light and the angle.
Creating my articles Microsoft Word Good vocabulary, My first articles were not planned which
literacy, composition meant I had to try and make them up as
etc. I went along. This faced me with many
problems such as the articles not being
as easy to think of and not as specific to
the magazine genre. Although my
second articles were targeted at exactly
the age, type and style of audience I
wanted it to be.
Creating the flat plans Photoshop and drawing Organisation For my college magazine I only drew
about 1 or 2 flat plans and they were
quite similar, which didn’t give me much
choice or variation. So in the planning
for my final product I made more of a
variety. I also analysed existing product
layouts to gain inspiration, which I did
not do in the preliminary task.

6. Using Photoshop...
Activity Technologies Skills Lessons
Adding Drop shadow Photoshop Photoshop tools I learnt to use this on my final
product as it is an essential
tool to make text stand out.
You can also change the colour
and direction of the drop
shadow and use an inner
shadow.
Changing sizes Photoshop Photoshop shortcuts and tools Although this sounds easy,
there are short cuts and keys
to learn to change the size of
images to make sure they
don’t get pixelised.
Using Layers Photoshop Photoshop tools In my college magazine, I
simply used the basic layers
and learnt to put them higher
up in the list to come out on
top. When I got to my college
magazine I experimented with
putting slightly different but
similar layers on top of each
other to create effects with
the photos and also how to
rasterize layers.