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

Over the course of creating the two tasks, I have learnt several new techniques about magazine production. Here are some examples.

Editing

In period between creating my college magazine and my music magazine, my photo editing skills have greatly improved. Here is a comparison of two items. One from my college magazine (arrow), and the other from my music magazine (New Year Special).







The text on the arrow looks really out of place. The shadow doesn't work, and the text overflows. There is too much text for the arrow, and is illegible from a distance. The New Years Special on the other hand really stands out. The shadowing effects I used really make a difference. The glow around the outside connotes fireworks which are often featured at a New Years celebration. It doesn't look as cluttered as the arrow either.

Layout

One of the main things I learnt over the course of my magazine creation is about the layout and structure. On my college magazine cover, I over filled it. The arrows didn't work and looked out of place. The text didn't look right and the banner at the top looked out of place. My contents page of my college magazine also didn't work. I created the desired 'electrical' effect, although it still seemed odd. The text was hard too read so on my music magazine contents page, I experimented with different fonts and colours to make it readable.

Research and Planning

Doing different topics, my research and planning should have taken to different paths, but the actually followed a similar route. As there are no reggae magazines in the UK, i had to use images found online. This was similar with the college magazines. I didn't have any physical copies, so I had to use images from online. My target audiences though were very different. Although both were very small. Researching college students was easy due to being a student, but my target audience for my music magazine was incredibly niche, and I couldn't interview anyone. Instead I asked people online to fill out the questionnaire which I e-mailed them.