This is question 7 of my as media coursework evaluation.

1. Question 7
EVALUATION
LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK,
WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE
PROGRESSION FROM IT TO FULL PRODUCT?

2. From creating my own music magazine I
feel I have now got more of an
understanding into how magazines are put
together; it is not just pictures and words it
is background research and creating a
product what an audience wants to buy.

3. I feel as though I have learnt a verity of different
skills from market research to putting the
magazine together on In Design.
Before I had begun this piece of coursework I
did not know how to use InDesign and I only
had a basic knowledge of some of the tools in
Photoshop, like the magic wand tool, for this
coursework I have had to develop these existing
skills and learn completely new ones to give my
magazine and overall professional look which
has been very interesting.

4. I used the preliminary task as a ‘practice’ of how
to make a magazine, I still wanted this to look
professional but it helped to develop my skills. I
did market research for the college magazine and
found that a questionnaire was the most simple
and effective way to collect data so I repeated this
in the main music magazine task. If I was to do
this task again I feel that I should have more
practise on my InDesign skills as sometimes I
struggled to get the look I wanted with my text
and backgrounds.

5. I have learnt that audience is one of the most
important aspects to making a magazine as if there
is no audience there is no magazine. I had to do a
lot of market research including questionnaires,
class surveys and internet research to find get a
target audience and what that particular audience
would like to see in a magazine. I think if I was to
do this task again I would have planned my
questionnaires a little better and include more
relevant questions that help me get a deeper
understanding in to what my target audience does
and what they like in a magazine.

6. I learnt about the forms and conventions of magazines
(in particular music magazines) this included looking
at a lot of magazines and seeing what similar
conventions they had. I learnt that it is often good to
break the conventions to keep up with the times and
keep the audience on their toes but not to break them
to much that the audience will not want to buy the
magazine. For example the masthead on my magazine
is quite unconventional as it has a picture within the
text and isn’t just one bold colour. To improve this
next time, if I was to repeat the task, I would think
more about how my magazine could be more
conventional so that it is recognisable as a music
magazine.

7. I tried out a lot of different design styles to
make sure that the magazine looked the
best it could be. I found that taking lots of
different popular music magazines and
taking ideas from each of them helped me
develop my own design style.

8. Overall I am very pleased with how my magazine has turned out as I feel
it has a strong brand and I think it is something I would buy if I was in
the shops. In hindsight I would change some of the aspects of my
magazine, mainly photography as I feel as though I didn’t have a wide
enough range to make the magazine look more professional. If I was to
do this task again I would arrange to have more models and take some
of the photos in different locations. It would also be good to get some
photos from live gigs as this would give a strong musical feel. I think
over the course of this making this magazine I have learnt at lot about
conventions, representations, audience, design style, and technologies;
doing the college magazine for the preliminary task really helped me
develop these skills and helped me come out with an overall better
music magazine.