Evaluation 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back at the magazine that I created for my preliminary task there are many different things that I changed in order for my magazine to look a lot better, I only included a lot more of the conventions that a magazine should truly include. 

When looking at my school magazine it doesn't look really bad however after creating my finial piece there are many things about the cover that I would change. 
The way in which the cover image has been taken is different to what is typically done on magazine covers, the image would have been a lot more effective if there was not squares on the phone as the image would have looked a lot clearer. However the image is a true representation of what occurs in school as we did not tell the two models we were going to take a picture of them. However you can see the mies-en-scene has not been though about as the image looks slightly messy with a bag on the right side and plugs in the background. If the image had been planned out more these things would have been changed. The school magazine was aimed a students so they are not going to want to read a magazine with masses of writing on however only using 3 headlines on the cover makes it look although the magazine has basically nothing inside it. We have also not made any reference to the models on the front and the input they may have inside the magazine. There are also two images on the right hand side that have been added but have no reason to be placed there as they have not been mentioned in the three cover lines that are on the cover. Many things on the cover have been missed off like the date, price and barcode. The cover looks more like a poster rather than a magazine. Due to using the same editing software 'Pixlr' for my finial magazine I understood how to use it a lot better and do many different things on it. However when creating my school magazine it was my first time using the software so I hadn't fully understood how to use the website, it also took a lot longer than it needed to in order to do the smallest things. 


From all of the background research that I had to do in order to create my magazine I had a full understand of what the house style of my magazine was going to be. However I had been told to create a school magazine and didn't know in great deal what the house style was, this meant that when picking things like the colour scheme I didn't have much knowledge of what had been used previously and what different things work. So I ended up using a colour scheme of red and white as these are the school colours. If I was to make any changes to my magazine now I was use the same style of image however take away the boxes that are being shown on the iPhone screen, I would also make a few changes to the mise en scene of the image. Many more of the typical magazine conventions also needed to be added like the date, price and barcode in order to make it more like a magazine rather than a poster. 

 From creating my school magazine to my music magazine my skills of using 'Pixlr' it didn't take me as long to do simple things and I understood how to change and add things a lot faster. My skills were also shown a lot more on my double page spread as I have letters under my writing that I had blurred out slightly placing the writing from my article on top. As I had done a lot more background research before starting to create my music magazine I had a full understand on the type of house style that I was going to be creating. So when choosing things like my colour scheme I was able to pick things that worked and had been used perviously. Hence why I went for the colour scheme of red, white and black as I had seen that this had been used in many different R and B magazines perviously so I knew that it worked and fitted the genre. Although I wanted to keep things simple for my music magazine I still used more than three cover lines in order to show what was going to be featured inside the magazine. I also addressed the models on the cover of my magazine, this time it is shown that they are the main feature of the magazine. I also used many of the typical magazine conventions, and didn't forget the simple features that need to be added to a magazine in order to make it a magazine like the date, price and barcode. 

One of the main factors that stands out about my contents page is the fact that the writing is red and so are the doors behind the writing making it pretty much impossible to be able to read the writing. The image on the contents page has followed the same theme as the cover as it is an action shot of students come out of school talking, the image again looks natural. The contents page does not include any numbers like a true contents page would. The position in which the writing has been placed hasn't been thought about also as it starts to go along the students in the image with looks very unprofessional and messy. The fact that the writing can not even seen due to the red doors behind it has tried to be avoided as the writing has been added towards the bottom of the door however due to the size and the font that has been used it is still very unclear to read. Again like the cover there are not many article headlines written down which leads the reader to think that there is not going to be many stories included in the magazine. 

Contrasting to the school magazine my music magazine contents page as a lot more story lines on it with page numbers also making it look more like a real magazine should. The writing it also a lot easier to read as the colour of the writing is white with some of the background black and some of it green, rather than white on white making it impossible to read. The layout in which everything was going to be was also thought about a lot more, like the way in which the word 'Contents' has been written down the side and where all of the article headlines have been position as they do not go across the models in a way that looks messy like had been down on the school magazine. 

Overall I feel although my music magazine looked a lot better and more like a magazine that the school magazine I had to create for my preliminary task. The images that were used on my music magazine looked a lot better ad they had been taken on a professional camera rather than a smart phone, they had also been edited. In order to meet the deadline for the preliminary task it was all a bit to rushed and there was not any attention to detail given hence why something's from the magazine were missed, and something's looked messy.