The student learned several skills from their preliminary magazine cover task to their final magazine product. For the preliminary task, they gained an understanding of layout, photo angles, and color schemes. For the final product, they studied magazines, surveyed audiences, and researched interviews. Their final front cover and contents page showed improvements in structure, placement of elements, and a more professional design compared to the preliminary versions. Through working on Photoshop, the student learned skills like layering text over images, adding headers and shadows, and developing a magazine layout that satisfied them and their target audience.

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

2. What it was?
• At the start of the course we had to do a preliminary
task, we were told to produce a front cover and a contents
page with whichever software we’d like, just to gain an
understanding of how magazines would need a certain
layout and a certain picture on the cover to make it appeal
to an audience. This benefitted us as it gave us an insight
into thinking about what camera angle the pictures should
be, how we’d arrange text, what colour schemes we’d use
etc. When it came to my final product we had studied
magazines and had a greater knowledge on them, we had
surveyed people into finding out what they looked for in
magazines, planned locations of photographs and also
looked into an interview of an artist and the language used
in magazines which had similar criteria to mine.

3. Front cover
My final product on the left
differs a great amount from my
preliminary task, It is more
structured, The logo is placed
better and it looks more
professional. My magazine had
progressed over time as my
skills in certain software did.
There is certain similarities in
my two covers such as the
photo still being in black and
white and having coloured text
but it has improved
dramatically in order to appeal
to my target audience and look
more professional.

4. Contents page
There is a massive difference
in my actual outcome on the
right to my preliminary task on
the left, the left was produced
in publisher and is very basic
and to a low standard, it
doesn’t include any shadowing
in text as my final product
does, doesn’t have pictures
and has a sloppy layout.
Photoshop allowed me to
discover many tools that most
software doesn’t have to push
my work further than being a
basic guideline and has come
dramatically far in what I
produced in September to
what has been produced in
January.

5. • I have learnt a great deal in developing my skills
on Photoshop and certain software which has
allowed me to produce a magazine which I am
more than satisfied with and believe I have put a
great deal of work into producing, it has taken a
while to get to my final product but I have got
there and believe the skills I have learnt
throughout this task will further me throughout
college and maybe into further life. I learnt how
to layer text onto images, how to put a header
behind a picture, add text and add shadowing
and been able to develop my magazine and came
out with a product I was fully satisfied with.

6. I have learnt how to use a digital camera and
make sure photos are in focus and how different
angles and shots can represent different moods
and can effect the look of a magazine. Also
learnt how layout effects the feel of the
magazine and having enough to interest a
reader to buy the magazine but not too much to
feel the magazine is overbearing.