1. Evaluation Question 7
Looking back at you preliminary task, what do
you feel you have learnt in the progression from
it to the full product?
2. Progression in my contents page
Looking back on my original pieces of work, it makes you realise how much research
and planning goes into these weekly issues of magazines. When I first started the
school magazine contents page was not planned nearly as in depth as I had planned
my music magazine. The space in the layout was not used correctly and now looking
at it I can notice straight away many small errors that if I had noticed before hand
would have made for an all round better looking product. My quality in photography
has gone up as I took the time to plan out what kind of shot I wanted and also for
what purpose. Although my early Magazine presents elements of similarities like in
colours, for my music magazine, to find out what a real magazine colour scheme
would look like I conducted research, looking at commonly used fonts, colours,
structures and types of images, this research led to me having a better understanding
of what a real life magazine needs to include. And how to attract an audience using
common codes and conventions but also by challenging those, and personalizing
them to your magazine profile, and how you want to be perceived by your audience.
The difference in the two contents pages is massive, you
can see how research and experimenting with the new
technologies has made a better product. The text of my old
school magazine does not have the same effect as my
music magazine, the alternate changing colours of black
and red make some information stand out more than
others even when it is no more important. And with the
fonts there is no variety. In my music magazine I used at
least three fonts per page to keep it looking interesting,
using certain font for certain parts, like titles and sub titles.
4. Progression in My Cover
I think the biggest progression in quality can be seen in my two front covers. I was shocked to see
how little attention to detail my previous school magazine cover had, and straight away I could
again see faults like in the black boarder of the cover, you can see the white highlighted edges
which makes it look messy and unorganised.
The quality of the images taken just shows how much a difference planning out before you do it
helps in the overall look and meaning of the photo. Regardless of having more time on my
second attempt with the music magazine, the difference in the product it huge. The styles are
different, with my school magazine representing that more of a Kerrang! Styled cover and my
music magazine having a collective style of simplistic and also bold bordered edges, which I think
carried traits of both Q magazine and of Kerrang and NME. Everything on my music magazine is
just more visually pleasing to the eye and will have much better effect on the market place as
more people will find it attractive and want to buy it.
I feel like I have improved in many ways between the two magazines, The way I structure a page
is a lot better with the space being used efficiently and more effectively. I have learnt of ways to
attract an audience through my presentation, language and the codes and conventions in my images
and also managed to create and apply my own original ideas through my product, overall I am
really pleased with the progress I have made over the past year and I think my up to date
magazine pages are to the level and quality I was aiming for.