Evaluation - Q7

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

 With the covers, after completing the preliminary task I analysed some real magazines and learned more about the code and the conventions that make a magazine look like a magazine. Also I had more time to plan what I wanted to do with ‘Dark Tech’ (the main task), and this helped to make it look better.

In the preliminary task I knew about the codes and conventions, but it wasn’t until after I analysed the five different magazines. So when it come to making ‘Dark Tech’ I knew how to use the codes and conventions, not just what they are. And I also learnt what doesn’t work, for example, having the cover lines too long and also having them written right across the page.

I learnt more about the effects and other tools that I used for ‘Dark Tech’ that I did know about when working on the preliminary task for example, the blood splatter. Also with ‘Dark Tech’ I had more planning time and I used it to work out what I was going to do and what genre I was going to aim for. Then I had more time to make ‘Dark Tech’ so I used this time to let my creativity to run wild and then I made it work so that it helped make the magazine look like a real; music magazine. I was able to be more organised with how I made ‘Dark Tech’ as well as how the cover looked at the end of it.

The magazine cover that I made for the preliminary task unlike ‘Dark Tech’ doesn’t have a bar code or a price, but as it was a college magazine it didn’t need these things. But it also did have the issue date or the web site of the college; ‘Dark Tech’ does have these things. ‘Dark Tech’ has a selling line and it uses a different image for the background of the cover, this made it easier to get the magazine to appeal to the right audience.

I feel that I have made some progress from the preliminary task to ‘Dark Task’, because ‘Dark Tech’ look as if it could be a normally, professional magazine that people would buy. But at the same time, the preliminary task was to make a college magazine and my product at that time fitted the purpose that it was made for, but as they both have different purposes and where made to appeal to different uses, then it is harder to see if I have improved when making ‘Dark Tech’.

With the contents pages, again analysing the five magazines helped when it came to making ‘Dark Tech’s contents page look professional. And I used the planning time to try out different ideas that I had of the contents page of ‘Dark Tech’, and I tried a few different ways of applying the ideas to the contents page until I found one that worked with the genre.

I thought about the target audience, where they were in the world at that age and what sort of things that both types of people were in to and I tried to reflect this in ‘Dark Tech’. I used Photoshop to adapt the colours of an image that I then used as the background of the contents page; I made it a deep electric blue so that it would appeal to both sides of the genre. And I added the ripped paper in the top left hand corner of the page for two reasons. One, was so the text of the contents lines were easy to read. The other was so that it helped reflect the Gothic side of the genre as they like to use scrap paper to take notes of some things.

I really like the background of the preliminary task, contents page but the colour of the text that I used for it is hard to read which stops it from looking as professional as ‘Dark Tech’s contents page. The preliminary task, contents page doesn’t have the masthead in the right top corner like what most magazines do but ‘Dark Tech’ does. They both also have the title of the page (contents page, which I like the font used in ‘Dark Tech’ more than the one that I used in the preliminary task) in the top left corner, but only ‘Dark Tech’ has the issue date under it. The contents lines of ‘Dark Tech’ look like they are in more of a column than the ones in the preliminary task that just go across the whole page. They both have a page number and they are in the same font as the title. They both have images of other article that are in the magazines but, ‘Dark Tech’ has page numbers that go with the images to tell the reader what page to look at for the article.

I think that I have improved a lot between the two magazine’s content pages, as the preliminary task was missing many of the codes and conventions that are needed.

With the double page spread, the preliminary task didn’t need a double page spread so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I think that it looks professional and that the article fits its purpose.