The document summarizes the improvements made from the author's preliminary magazine task to their actual music magazine. Some key improvements included adding more effects like drop shadows to the masthead, using stronger colors on the cover that stand out better, including more imaginative images, making text sizes larger and clearer on pages like contents, and addressing weaknesses identified in the preliminary task. Overall, the author felt they progressed significantly and learned valuable lessons that allowed them to create a stronger final music magazine.

1. Preliminary Task to Actual
Magazine:
My Progression

2. Mastheads
As you can probably see, there has been a big improvement regarding the two magazine
mastheads. I found out how to employ more effects for my music magazine masthead; I
included a drop shadow and an inner shadow and used a better font. With my prelim
masthead, I was oblivious to all these effects and so the masthead looks pretty basic. I
think this is one of the biggest improvements I have seen.

3. Front Cover
The front covers are so different and I think there are visible improvements. I think one change is the
use of colour. Some of the colours I use on my prelim cover are quite different and don’t fit together as
well as they could. There are also issues regarding colours not standing out against the image. I think
with the strong colours used on my music magazine cover stand out much better from the background
image and the text is a much better size and therefore more visible to the audience. I think I’ve also
been more imaginative with shapes; for example, the ‘no entry’ sign which acts as a background for the
competition information. Saying this, there are similarities with the layout because what hasn't
changed, is that I want the cover to be under-crowded and easily readable. I think that overall the cover
looks much more professional and stands out much better than the school magazine cover. I’m happy
about this because I like to see that I have made some improvement.

4. Images
I think the image on the cover of my music magazine is much more interesting because the pose is
something unique and different whereas the image on the cover of my school magazine is more
straight-forward and slightly unimaginative. The cover is the thing that the audience will see first so I
realised from my prelim that I needed to think hard about the image I would use for my cover. It was a
similar story for the contents page. I found that both of the smaller images on the contents page of the
school magazine were quite boring because they were very basic so I
decided that for my music magazine I wanted to be more imaginative
with poses and therefore follow the conventions of real music magazines.
As you can see, there has been a big improvement image-wise from my
prelim task to my actual magazine. I think that when I looked back at my
prelim, I was able to see where the weak areas were and I was therefore
able to improve for my music magazine.

5. Contents Page
To some extents, the contents pages are very similar. I kept the same layout because I thought it made the page look
spacious and organised. There are numerous elements that have improvements, however. One thing that I think has
definitely improved is the page heading because on my prelim contents page, the word ‘Contents’ is very small which
it shouldn’t be seeing as it is the second most important page in any magazine. I also found that the sub-section
headings were very small and it’s vital they are clear because they allow readers to navigate through the magazine. I
think also with my music magazine, it is easier to distinguish between the article headings, the summaries and the
page numbers as they are in different colours whereas, with my prelim, they are all in black which makes them harder
to see. On my music magazine contents pages, I also included an editorial, which I found from my research, is very
important as it’s a chance to communicate with the audience. One thing I didn’t do on my prelim was include a web
address on the page which I should have done. Because I missed things out like this in the prelim, I was able to
remember to include them in my music magazine which is where they really count.

6. Overall...
I think I have progressed massively over the past few months from the creation of my
preliminary task to the creation of my actual music magazine. I feel that I was able to
pick up important things through the creation of my prelim task which allowed me to
make my music magazine a stronger piece of work. I feel I have learnt so much and
will be able to use what I have learnt in future tasks similar to this.
I think my understanding of photography, layout and modes of address has definitely
improved and that has allowed me to make my music magazine much better and a
piece of work that I am very proud of.