The author reflects on improvements between their initial school magazine project and subsequent music magazine. For the school magazine, they were still learning the software and it showed with a bare cover lacking information, contents page with much white space and little detail, and dull overall design. For the music magazine, they applied what they learned and it shows with a colorful, busy cover; well-laid out contents page with location diagrams; and double page spread using layers and colors effectively like a real magazine. The author sees significant progress in their design skills and abilities.

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. Back to School!
When looking back at my school
magazine I believe that I have improved
a lot! Not only with being able to use
different techniques but also being able
to show the level of work that has
improved dramatically. When looking at
it, the level of work has improved
because on my school magazine, its
rather bare and it was the first time of
making a magazine!

3. Back to School!
For my cover I wanted to be able to
create something enjoyable to
read, that wasn’t too boring for
students, but they would still want
to read it. When the school
magazine started there were
several copies of it, so that I could
find the right one to use. In the end
it ended up having a bare
background and some smiling
people on the front cover, like all
school magazines had, but there
was no real information about the
inside of the magazine.

4. Back to School!
With the contents page, I notice that I
had a limited amount of experience with
InDesign and Photoshop so I made a few
mistakes when creating the contents
page. I made several versions of the
contents page, just to see which one
would be best to use! When the final
ideal came around it looked rather bare
still because there was a lot of a white
background on it, and barely any
information for the inside of the
magazine.

5. Covers! The covers for both my
school magazine and music
magazine are very different!
For starters the colour on
the music magazine really
shows off on it, while on the
school magazine its bare,
and lifeless. Its busy on the
music magazine which I like
about it, its my favourite
part out of everything for
both magazines!
I can see the progress that I have
made, and it’s a really big difference
between each one and its
noticeable. The amount of time and
effort that went into making the
music magazine, probably doesn’t
even scratch the surface with the
amount of time and effort went into
the school magazine. The school
magazine was the first project and
was a challenge because I was
learning how to use all of the
software from scratch and so the
product didn’t come out as best as it
could of, but when starting the
music magazine, you can easily see
how well the progress has changed
with the was I have designed
everything.
My cover mastheads also show the
amount of time that went into it because
they are both very different. One is full of
colour and the other is very plain and
simple.

6. Contents
Again I can see how I have
created a really good piece of
work with in the space of a
few months, just from learning
more information about
InDesign and Photoshop. I can
see the really big different
between the two contents
pages. My school magazine
has a dull look to it and is very
bland and boring, but I think
that I used Photoshop well
when working with my main
model on the school
magazine.
From my contents page title
you can see that they are
both very different. The
colour is a main difference as
well as one of them saying
“Contents” and the other
“Inside the mag”.
I think my contents page has improved a lot. The way that its
set out is a big deal, because I wanted it to look full, but not
over crowded and I believe that it looks amazing, because
the little diagram shows where each part of the magazine is
located, and that is a great touch to it.

7. How have these improvements
affected my Double Page Spread?
When creating my double page spread it looks
colourful, bright, and the layout of it is simple
yet effective. I think for this piece of work I
would have improved it by adding a
background, but at the same time it looks really
good with out one. The way the colours are in
blocks and other shapes shows off certain
aspects of it. It has the cute factor and the pop
factor linked into it and that’s what I wanted to
achieve with it. I used a similar colour scheme
throughout the whole of the magazines, and
they are bright bold colours, as well as keeping
a simple look to it. With the improvements I
would say that I have been able to use layers to
its full potential and that has worked well as it
looks like the inside of a real magazine!