Q7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

When completing my preliminary task, I had a very limited knowledge about all aspects of technology and what really made a good magazine. I have learnt that my ideas may not be the right ones, and that Target Audience Research is very important as this determines whether people will be attracted to, and will buy the media product that I have created.

The use of Photoshop elements 11 has also challenged me as the final magazine pages required a lot more detailed knowledge and technological influence. I was able to gain knowledge when completing my music magazine with help from my peers and teachers and also through the use of trail and improvement.

The skills that have improved have allowed me to include things such a gradients, puffs, pugs, banners, different shapes with a variation of transparency, text, and also to find shapes that can be modified to the way in which I want them to be used.

My creativity has improved drastically between these two tasks and I have become a lot more open minded about the ideas and layouts that may look best on certain pages. For example, I was going to use a particular image for the background on my Double Page Spread but after completing research I figured that a brighter, more colourful image would be more appropriate as it would create a happier and positive image when just glancing at the page as the other image was dull and contained many greys.

I learnt that when asking my model to pose, it was more successful when they were looking into the camera and this created synthetic personalisation between my media product and the reader, which is also known as a false relationship. This also engages the reader and, in a way, makes the magazine more personal to them.
This supports Mulvey's male gaze effect theory.


Furthermore, I learnt that maybe the brighter colours were not always the most appealing images to use in a front cover, as the green font used on my preliminary task looked "tacky and childish". This then led me to use deeper colours like red and blue as they are still bright colours, but not too bright to look unprofessional.

It doesn't have to be big to stand out. I realised this when researching strap lines and mastheads. The strap line on my preliminary task was too big although I didn't realise this at the time. In addition, it is better looking when a contrasting colour to the masthead, which I also found when making my final music magazine compared to the lack of knowledge I had when making the College magazine in the preliminary task.


In addition, I have learnt that although this has been a challenging task, the outcome can only be positive as if things went wrong, I was always able to correct them through the use of different tools and methods. For example, when the vignette on my front cover deleted all of my layers (because of lack of knowledge), I had to start my front cover from scratch, only to find that a red background looked more appealing and suited the magazine much more. This is when the house style first arose.