Skills development

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

On the left hand side my preliminary task is on top and underneath is my finished magazine cover. You can see straight away from looking at the two that my finished product is a huge improvement from my preliminary task and is a much better quality product.

The most obvious difference in the two is the main photos. The photo on my preliminary task is a very bad quality so it is not clear and doesn’t look professional. Also, the photo is not big enough for the magazine so it doesn’t stand out and there is too much empty space on the cover so it looks bare. The image on my finished magazine is very clear as it is good quality which automatically makes the magazine look a lot more professional. The image also sticks to the convention of two thirds so that it takes up most of the page so there isn’t too much empty space, but leaves room for the cover lines ect. Although my preliminary task has direct address and my finished product doesn’t, this is something that I did purposely because I wanted to challenge the convention.  Another big difference between the two is the mastheads and cover lines. On my preliminary task it is obvious that they do not stand out at all, this is because the font is not bold enough and it is grey on grey which really doesn’t stand out and would not catch anyone’s eye if it was on a shelf in a shop. I made sure that I chose a very bold font for my mast head on my finished product because I knew it was very important for it to be bold and readable. Also the cover lines on my finished product stand out a lot more than on the preliminary as they are in caps which is easier to read at a glance and also they are in bright colours which stand out on the page. The cover lines feature a lot of artists and bands that are popular with my target audience and will catch their interests. Whereas my preliminary task does not have any artists or bands on the front so therefore it is not very likely that my target audience would be interested in the magazine.  The background of my finished products is bricks but originally they were a lot brighter and they took a lot of the attention away from the text and image so I learnt of Photoshop how to fade them out slightly and add a green tint to them. This makes the cover more aesthetically pleasing and makes the image stand out a lot more so it looks more professional.

On the left is my preliminary task and underneath is my finished contents page.

My finished product is a huge improvement from my preliminary task in many ways.  The first way is the content. The preliminary task is very vague and doesn't give much information about what is in the magazine. Also, the content wouldn't appeal to my target audience, whereas my finished product does such as bands and festivals.  In addition to this the text on the preliminary task is covering the image which makes it hard to read; the image is not a good quality and is not relevant. But my finished products images are relevant to the content of the magazine and are good quality. The reason the preliminary tasks image Is such bad quality is because it was taken on my mobile phone, but I made sure that I took my images for my final product on a good quality camera which made a huge difference. Another thing that was a bad decision for the preliminary task was the colour of the back round. It would have been better to of had the background all black because where it fades into white it makes it very hard to read the text. The text on my finished product stands out really well as it is white on blue and the reader would have no difficulty reading this. When creating my finished product I learnt how to use the ‘stroke’ tool which outlines the font, this really made my text stand out more and as you can see looks a lot better than the preliminary tasks font as I did not know how to do this then so that shows how learning more Photoshop skills really helped with creating a successful product. The advertisement of a chance to win Reading festival tickets at the bottom of the page relate to my target audience really well as they are avid festival goers therefor this is likely to appeal to them.