Evaluation Question Seven

Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task What Have You Learnt From The Progression From It To The Main Task ?

Looking back at my preliminary task I can see the obvious progression that I have made and improvements in the way I have taken photos, used colour and fonts , and laid things out on the pages that I have created. When creating my preliminary task I found it difficult to create a magazine that looked to any professional standard as I was not aware of the use of space on the page and rules such as rule of thirds. I also had no experience with any of the programme or equipment which I was using ; Photoshop , InDesign , Blogger or the Cannon DSLR. This meant that everything that I was doing took more time than it would have done if I was competent with these things. A school magazine was also not something that I was particularly interested in making, unlike my music magazine. This meant that I was unsure on many of the decisions I was making, meaning that I also found it hard to be creative with my work. Due to all of these things I became very rushed for time nearing the end of the preliminary task meaning that the contents page that I produced, I believe was to a very low standard. However because of this I was able to realise the importance of planning and time scales when it came to my main task, the music magazine.

Not only did I find that I had made a transition with the final products that I had created for the magazines, I also found that I was also to understand the importance of research and planning toward the final product to ensure that you can make it to the most professional standard and allow it to look in line with real media products. For my preliminary task the research that I carried out was quite general and did not do specific or detailed research like I realised would be needed for my magazine. However it was only through my lack of research for my school magazine that I was able to realise how needed it is to ensure that my magazine was as professional as possible.

Front Page Comparrison ; 

In reflection, at the time I was fairly pleased with the front cover that I created for my preliminary task, this shows the lack of knowledge that I had in regards to the way that a front cover should look and the features it should have to make it look like a magazine cover as I now see it as a very low standard cover.

I think that the cover that I created for my preliminary task is all about the photo that I used and could potentially be mistaken more for a poster then a magazine cover. I learnt from this and tried to avoid it with my music magazine through adding feature's such as the black header at the top of the page. 
I also think that the preliminary cover looks very bare. I avoided this in my music magazine by including a lot more text and titles. This was also a way which I could entice readers to pick up the magazine and be attracted to read it.
Looking back on my preliminary cover I also now noticed a lack of balance and I had not stuck to the rule of thirds of having a balance of visual weights to make the page equal. I feel as if I concentrated strongly on this when creating my chart magazine and took a long time moving around different aspects on my cover which were heavy and needed to be balanced out. This included the positioning of the title, cream fields logo, cross, main headline and bar code.
Even though I attempted to keep a relatively consistent colour scheme throughout the front cover of my school magazine by using the eyedropper tool to duplicate colours from the photo, in reflection I think there is too many colours been used on that front cover making it look too busy and therefore unprofessional  In my music magazine I have kept to a very strict red white and black colour scheme and not broken the rule of more than four colours per page by only including an additional colour of blue for aspects on the page which are heavy visual weight and I want to draw attention to.

Contents Page Comparison :

For my preliminary task I felt that my contents page was a lot weaker than the front page that I created. This was due to poor timing that I had for the task and I was left with very little time to complete the page therefore rushed it with very little research and attention to detail when creating the product. I feel like this was the product that has gone through the biggest positive transition from preliminary to main task.
I did not have the time to  use many skills in indesign or photoshop on my preliminary task to even attempt to make it look in line with contents pages from real media products. Due to having a set time scale and improved planning for my music magazine task I was able to display a lot more skills that I was also more competent and confident in using through being able to get used to them in my preliminary task.  I included much more on my music magazine contents page such as a banner at the top of the page which was a good way for me to add a block of colour on the page, breaking up my articles in the listings with lines, page numbers on my images, a small image of the front cover of the magazine. I have also added additional features onto my music magazine contents page where as I had nothing more than the contents listing and two images on my school magazine. These include a quote that goes with one of the larger images on the page, a win feature and a chart box which shows the download chart listings, it is in this that I have displayed a gradient swatch.

Overall, I feel that I have made a significant positive transition in both of the products that I have created in both tasks. As I have already mentioned I do not think this is only through the design and production element of the tasks but also through the research and planning that has allowed my final products to improve to a much higher standard.