Evaluation Q7

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

For my preliminary task, I created a front cover and contents page for a school magazine. I had never done anything like that before so it was good practice in preparation for making my music magazine. I used the skills that I had learnt and developed them so that I was able to create a successful music magazine.

AudienceAudience research was an important factor to learn first of all. The magazine needs to be able to attract the audience and without researching how to do that, I wouldn’t have been able to succeed. For the school magazine, the audience was quite broad; it was targeted at pupils of the school with all sorts of different interests, ages and preferences included. This made it a quite easy task as there didn’t have to be any particular conventions included apart from general magazine conventions (such as picture on front, cover lines, etc.). The fact it needed to be able to suit 11 to 18 year olds which would normally be split into different magazine target age groups, was another thing I had to ensure. It seems quite tough to do when thinking about it, but since the magazine is only about school; it turned out to be quite easy. I made sure everything was gender neutral and nothing was too complicated to read but at the same time not too simple and easy to read –either option would probably mean that readers got bored. I tried to stick to the schools colours so that it actually looked like it was the school’s magazine. The whole point of target audience is so that you’re able to meet the reader’s needs, I had to make sure the magazine was providing suitable information which would be interesting/helpful to the students otherwise it wouldn’t have met their needs.

However, For my music magazine, there had to be a particular audience. I had to ensure that the magazine was able to meet the needs of my target audience - so it wasn’t as easy to achieve. I had to learn how to tailor my project so that it could be suitable for a broader more particular audience rather than the limited school audience. Not only did the information within have to be suitable, but the magazine itself had to include suitable conventions particularly for rock magazines.

ResearchI know the school magazine isn’t perfect but it was good for working out where I had gone wrong and how I could improve when I created the music magazine.

Since I had not made a magazine before, I had to learn about conventions of magazine layouts. This meant that I needed to look at existing magazines to figure out what conventions were important- this is so my magazines could both look like real ones. Even though magazines are varied and can look very different from one another, there are still basic conventions that need to be included. The conventions include things like a large masthead, photo’s, title behind people’s heads, cover lines, barcode, etc.

I also learned a lot about how to research correctly.This included things like questionnaires and readers profiles etc.By doing this, I was able to have knowledge on who the audience is and what they want out of the magazine. I gathered up percentages by doing these so that I could get an overall idea on who the audience was.

TechnologyThroughout the whole process of the project, I have learnt and used lots of different technologies. When I first started my preliminary work, I had not used Photoshop to any great extent, especially not to create something like a magazine. It was frustrating to use at first, but slowly I managed to get the hang of the program and figure out how things work. I was able to figure out different methods of presenting my work.

I also learned how to use a camera as I do not really have any experience in using a professional camera, that was also tough to do at first. There was lots of different buttons on the camera which I had no idea about, but after some help, it was easy. I used a tripod too so that my pictures turned out good and at a professional standard, if I didn’t use a tripod, the pictures could be blurred.

Editing these photos on Photoshop was an important factor too, not all pictures will have the best lighting and backgrounds so sometimes things need to change. I was able to learn all about changing contrast, colours, editing and cutting pictures out, etc. – Meaning my pictures could be at an even better standard.

I have gained a developed use of technology.

After creating the school magazine, I learned loads of new technology such as InDesign, most of which was talked about on question 6 of the evaluation. I decided to use new technologies because I wanted to create a better aesthetically pleasing piece of work. The more technologies which are used, the better the magazine would probably become. Blogger was one of the biggest technologies I used, merely because my whole project has been based on there.We had to post all of our research and process onto the blog so that it was easy to keep track of. I had not used any sort of blogging site like that before, so it was all new experience.

My preliminary work taught me the basics meaning I was able to create a much better piece when it came to the music magazine.

I went from creating a school magazine aimed at a niche

audience….… to creating a magazine

aimed at a larger audience - competing against existing

magazines such as Kerrang.