The student learned several important lessons from their preliminary task to their final music magazine product. Through research on magazine codes and conventions, the preliminary task of a college magazine helped them improve Photoshop skills and understand what elements make a realistic magazine. For the final product, they managed resources like models and photos, planned their time effectively, researched the target audience, managed ideas through magazine analysis, and overcame problems like selecting a cohesive color scheme.

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. Initial approach
• When I first approached the task I knew that I would be making a music magazine, this
meant that I would need to do lots of research in order for my magazine to be successful
and look like a real music magazine.
• I found the first few of the research tasks extremely useful for such things as the codes and
conventions of typical magazines of the genre I wanted, this allowed me to understand
what I would need to be including in my own magazine for it to look anything like the real
product.

3. Preliminary Task
• The preliminary task consisted of the codes and conventions that I had already found in my
research in order to make my own college magazine.
• These tasks may have been for a different genre of magazine however, it did help me to
realise what the main codes and conventions are in all magazines and how they all work
together to create a realistic looking product.
• Making my own college magazine was very helpful as I was able to slowly improve my
Photoshop skills before making my final product for my music magazine.

4. Resources
• For my magazine I had to get three different models for my magazine and I used the
colleges camera to take my pictures.
• I made the decision to use props like mics when taking my photos as during my analysis I
found that many of the magazines used props.
• I was able to have multiple photo shots with each of my models which helped me to find
the best pictures for my magazine.

5. Time Management
• This was a very important factor for the project on the whole as without good time
management it would have been extremely difficult to have got my magazine finished by
the deadline that was set.
• As I did not waist a lot of time trying to work out how to use Photoshop properly for I found
it quite easy to pick up it meant that I was able to create a ruff outline for my magazine
rather quickly which allowed me to spend the rest of my time changing and tweaking
certain aspects of the magazine and experimenting with what looked the best.

6. Target Audience Input
• I did some target audience research to see what my target audience would want to see in
my magazine and what attracted them the most out of the different ideas I had.
• I found this to be very helpful as it gave me something to focus on and aim for in my
magazine because I had certain targets to meet in order for me to produce the best
magazine oi could for my audience.

7. Managing Ideas
• I did lots of research into what models look like on front covers of magazines and what shot
they where usually framed in, so that this would give me some ideas for when I made my
own.
• I looked at magazines like NME and The Source as they are particularly popular magazines
in the genre of music magazines I was looking at creating.
• by doing this research I was able to manage my ideas rather well as I had lots of ideas that I
believes would look good but after actually putting these ideas into practice I found that I
was not satisfied and that I could come up with better ideas that would compliment my
models better.

8. Problem Solving Decisions
• One of the biggest problems I had was my colour scheme and trying to make my magazine
look realistic as I needed to keep a theme using the same colours throughout the magazine.
• I managed to get a basic idea of what I wanted from the beginning which meant I had more
time to play around with different layouts and colour schemes for the magazine.
• I believe I overcame this problem rather well as I was eventually able to find a colour
scheme that I not only liked but that appealed to my audience and fitted with the genre of
music.