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

Seeing the difference between my preliminary task and my finished product, my skills have obviously developed greatly. Before I had no knowledge of photoshop and found even the most simple tasks difficult. I looked online to get help with a lot of things because there is many good tutorials that are free to use, I also asked my teacher for help. It goes without saying that I wanted to put a lot more effort into my final product than I did my preliminary task, if I wanted to do something with my final product I would work hard to find out how to do it, whereas with my preliminary task if I couldn't work out how to do something I would change my idea as I realised it was not as important. As you can see by the pictures below, my college magazine is very plain and only uses two colours, it's not very attractive and I don't think it would catch people's eye like my music magazine would. Because my final product has a lot more going on, but doesn't look tacky. This is a plus because it gives the audience information without confusing them.

I think something that made a big difference to my final product is the fact that I looked at other magazines and took ideas from them. My college magazine is something you would never see in a shop because it has no conventions, nothing about says it will be a good magazine because you wouldn't really see it as a proper magazine. It just looks dull. When I went about making my final product I looked at magazines such as Kerrang! and Metal Hammer to get inspiration, this helped a lot as I found conventions and then knew what looked good.

When using photoshop for the first time I was really confused, I'd never used it before and it was all new to me. That's why my college magazine turned out so bad, I simply didn't know how to use photoshop. After a while I gained a lot more skills and I think this shows in my final product. One of the techniques I used most was the 'outer glow' on text. I used it on my front page and double page spread because I liked the effect it gave the words. I used it on the most important this and the things I wanted to stand out the most. It helped because when something has a glow around it you tend to notice it more. For the photos I liked the effect the 'brightness/contrast' tool gave. Because I know you can photoshop pictures to make skin clearer and teeth whiter etc. But I didn't know how to do this and it would probably take up a lot of time I didn't have. So I settled for making the pictures brighter so the skin looked clearer. I didn't want to overdo it so you couldn't see any facial features because it was too bright, so I only adjusted it slightly. It gave a model like look, because it looked as thought she was 'glowing'.

My final magazine definitely appeals to my audience. As I listen to metal and rock music my self and buy Kerrang! magazine, it is something I would pick up if I saw it in a shop. The layout and design is attractive because the dark colours contrasted with the bright yellow give the magazine an eye catching effect. The fonts used also contrast with each other, 'Afterlife' is in a messy kind of font whilst 'Lacuna Coil' is in a scripted sophisticated font, which gives the magazine something which will appeal to everyone. Whilst finishing my music magazine, the fact that I read Kerrang! and Metal Hammer definitely helped me come up with my design and layout and they both use media conventions. I also found it easier to write my feature article because it gave me ideas of what type of questions to ask, and how I would go about impersonating 'Cristina Scabbia'. I got most of my feedback from my friends who have a similar taste in music to me, this helped greatly because as they liked the music included in the magazine, they could give me an honest opinion on how I represented it. They gave me constructive criticism so I could change things that would help me attract my target audience even more. I obviously needed to be very attentive to detail when creating my magazine because I didn't want to either under or over do it. I think I got a good balance and made it interesting to look at without going too crazy.