Evaluation question 7

looking back at your preliminary task, what have you leant in the progression from it to the full product?

There are many different forms to media presentation and how information can be shared with an audience. Magazine publishing is a growing media industry reaching out to millions globally. For the purpose of this evaluation I will demonstrate how I developed my knowledge with one particular form of media, which is that of creating my own magazine. The initial task was to create a school magazine that essentially would cater to an audience of my choice. My audience choice was young girls from St Catherine’s girl school from year seven to eleven. The idea was to develop a guide that would illustrate the best ways to survive coming into a new school and any changes to the school environment for the older year groups. Once this was completed I was able to move on to my full product which was a music magazine.

For my preliminary task I had to ensure that the ideas for the magazine reflected the audience, I learnt that the use of pictures were important as they illustrate to the audience what the magazine is about and whether or not it is directed to them.  I was able to use this knowledge and demonstrate attention to detail  in not just only considering my audience type but also when it came to small things in my work. For example, including the page number, the magazine website and how to get in contact with the magazine on twitter in small print at the bottom of my double page spread which gave a more professional look.

 When it came to my music magazine I needed to take several different steps in order to ensure mistakes that were made in my preliminary task were not made this time around, because of this, I initially created a mood board to give me a few ideas of the target audience I wanted to represent. It was also useful as it kept me focused on what needed to be featured, such as color and themes.  I was also able to gather more detailed research into different front pages, content pages and double page spreads. Whilst gathering my research I noticed that a number of magazines had made use of anchorage text, assuming audiences want to know more about certain subject matters. This was something I wanted to reflect on my magazine cover.

In the progression from my preliminary task to my full product I was able to test my knowledge on the two main software's we had to use. These were Photoshop and Adobe in design. Initially I found it difficult to use the software and came across a number of challenges such as editing photos and making sure they were in focus. I needed to learn how to use the tools in the correct way and establish what tools were best for different parts of my magazine and graphic features.

The software used to present our work is called Blogger. It was important for me to be able to use this software in order to demonstrate my work accurately. From working on my preliminary task I made progress in the use of this software for my full report for my music magazine. For example I was able to add labels and make good use of html codes.  Overall I became better at posting more and demonstrating my work more frequently, adding more detailed research and producing more work

To concluded  I learnt how to make better use of my time and keeping all my research focused on my target audience at all times. Despite a few challenges to the focus of my audience, I believe what I have created reflects the ideologies of my audience and my research helped me to develop this further. My magazine design stays true to values and beliefs of music lovers ages 15 to 25. Evidence of this can be found in my collation of videos in evaluation question 5.