When i look back from my music magazine to my preliminary task i can see that i have come a very long way. I have made progression in understanding the uses of technology in making a magazine, the codes and conventions an the importance of time management.
When i first made my preliminary task i was new and an amateur when it came to adobe photoshop and understanding the importance of the layout and colour of a magazine. As you can see here i only used basic beginner tools in my magazine. For example: The image...i just took picture that i thought would look nice and attractive not really bearing in mind the layout of my magazine. As you can see here my image is very big and well lit but when it cam to putting my text on to the page, the text overlapped my image which was not good as a good magazine has everything balanced and laid out well. Another example is my text...I noticed that my preliminary task the text i used was very basic and boring compare to some of the text i used in the final product of my music magazine. Although i tried making some of my text stand out using drop shadows and highlights the magazine still looked plain. this is not good as it would not help me when it came to attracting the audience. I also found out through my research that almost every magazine consists of more than 1 font. This makes the page look a lot more interesting as one font is boring.
In the contents page of my preliminary task i lacked the knowledge of other music magazine contents pages and techniques. For example reducing the amount of space left on a page. I noticed in my research that some magazines filled the whole of their magazine with either, text, image or shapes but at the end there was no space left at the end. Also looking back into my preliminary task i found that the content in my contents page was not so informative and they were not really appealing. But now i know that in order to turn a potential buyer into a actual buyer your content must be informative and attractive and this is what i lacked in my preliminary task.
When i compare my preliminary task front page and contents page to my actual magazines front page and contents page i see a lot of difference. The difference between the two magazines show that i have definitely come a long way in the last few months.
In my magazine front page i have learnt to use all the space on the page. This helps as it makes your magazine look very informative and shows that you know what your doing. In my magazine you can see that there is hardly any space left around on the page, i made sure of this by filling any spaces with extra text or shapes. Colour is also very important in a magazine as it is one of the things that can grab a readers attention. On my page i tried ti keep my colours to a minimum whilst making sure that they look interesting and looked good together. This is a difference from my preliminary task as i only included about 3 colours and repeated them throughout my magazine which was a bit boring. When it came to the image i had to put a lot of thought and consideration into picking which picture was appropriate for my magazine, this is mainly because of the mistake i made in my preliminary task when i did not really take into consideration the test and space in which i would need to put beside or on top of my image. So when i came up with this image i was very happy as it allowed me to put all the content i planned to put on my page with out really worrying about the image and the space on the page.
There were also a few lessons learnt from my preliminary task contents page and my music magazine contents page in which i included. For example my text. The text and the titles on my preliminary task were very boring and simple and i had to make sure that it did not happen in my music magazine. So in my music magazine contents page i added more text to each heading and explained what i would be talking about in each topic/heading. This could also help my potential readers as they have a deeper insight into what the articles inside the magazine will be about.
Other things i learnt:
- I learnt from my magazine research and my preliminary task that the image or model on my front page is very important. In my preliminary task i used school kids, the problem was that i used two females instead of one female and one male. This was not good as it looked like i was appealing to one part of the school and not the other. So in my music magazine i decided to use a model that does not appeal to one sex but appealed to the audience that loved that genre of music which is both male and female. So i decided take a picture of my model dressed like he was a star in the R'n'B industry so it will appeal to the readers. I also had to make sure that the image stood out and also appealed to the readers and audience so i edited the image to make it stand out more
- I have also learnt that the music magazine industry is a increasingly competitive place to be in right now and only those who come up with something new and appealing are able to survive and make money. Every week the stats of each magazines fall or rise and this is due to whether people are buying there magazine, From my research i found out that there were not many R'n'B magazine in the music magazine industry, so making one will show that i am bringing in something new and also helping publishers appeal to a wider audience.
- Time management. This was a very important part of the course and also one of the hardest. During the course we had many deadlines we had to meet in order to keep up with work load and give an equal amount of time to our contents, front and double page spread so they all looked up to standard. If these times were not met there was a a chance of you either not being able to finish a task or falling right behind in the course which was not a good thing at all. Not meeting deadlines and falling behind in course work for some of us was a wake up call and realisation that extended learning out side the school premises was something in which we had to consider strongly.
- Text. I learnt from both my research that the content a magazine is part of the formula to its success in the magazine industry. I had to make sure that the text in my contents page, front page and double page spread were interesting and appealed to the right readers.
- Adobe Photoshop/inDesign. If i had to name the top 10 things i learnt front my preliminary task, photoshop will most definitely be in the top 3! Personally i have come a long long long way when it comes to understanding photshop since my preliminary task, I almost feel that i have mastered the art of manipulating images and texts using this software. If you compare the way preliminary task front page and my music magazine front page look it is evident that i used almost 10 times more of photoshop than my preliminary task.
No comments:
Post a Comment