I learnt a lot about planning in particular from my preliminary magazine, as I did not properly plan its layout beyond a few simple sketches before I launched into my final piece. This would have prevented me from gaining critique about its layout and presentation before I created my final magazine. This time however, by making templates on the computer, I could both edit the idea myself, having been able to see it and change it first, and also post it on social networking site Facebook, to gain audience critique so I could change errors or unsuccessful elements before finalizing.

I found that researching much more deeply into my target audience helped me pinpoint what interested them and also helped me make many decisions about the layout and presentation of my magazine, as well as the literary and photographic contents. In my preliminary project, my audience research was much briefer and I feel it affected the outcome of that magazine.

I feel that a lot of the success of my project was down to my careful management of time, which meant I was able to spend more time tweaking and editing and gathering opinions

about my work once it was completed. This job was made more complicated by the fact that I had less time on this project than was intended, due to weather making my college

inaccessible for a week. That I still had time to spare proved that I was efficient in managing my time. I learnt this from the preliminary task, as before I spent too much time on particular

things, for instance spending too much time editing. This resulted in a rush to completion which made the end result much rougher than intended.

Photography and image manipulation

Pre

limin

ary

Pro

ject

Final

Pro

ject

The biggest differences between my photography in the preliminary project and my final project are the

settings and my editing skills. In my preliminary task, I chose to photograph/be photographed against

a detailed background, which I then attempted to edit out. This was, evidently, not very successful,

and my editing appeared messy and amateurish as I couldn’t easy select and delete the background. To

combat this, I used a proper photography studio with a plain background which made editing the image

much simpler. I also chose to edit in a much subtler manner, changing colour tones, exposure and adding

subtle touches with transparency-set brushes on Photoshop. My extended time scale in comparison to the previous task allowed me more time to edit more

carefully too.

Computing

In my preliminary task, I had only just began to use Quark Xpress, and was still learning how to use it correctly when I created my first magazine’s contents

page. Now, however, I am much more practised in using the program and so, when using it again for my double page spread in my final project, I was able to

apply many more techniques and use more tools the program had to offer. Similarly, my use of Photoshop as a publishing tool has also, I feel, improved, being able to use it this time for editing fonts and shapes as well as images.

The most valuable thing I learnt was to value the opinions of my target audience. In my preliminary project, I felt that the magazine only reflected my own ideas and was biased towards my own interests due to lack of input from

others. This time however, I sought to involve my audience through each stage of production, showing my ideas and drafts on Facebook to gather critique, and also seeking the opinions of my audience on my finished piece to see how truly

successful my magazine was. I feel now that the magazine is not just a projection of my own ideas, but is in fact made up of the interests of my target

audience, making it an interesting and exciting magazine for them to read.