7) 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?

At the beginning of my coursework during the preliminary task I didn’t really have a clue of how to use Photoshop. However as the weeks progressed I developed many skills including how to make the page A4. As you can see in the preliminary task my front cover and contents page was square rather than A4. But I have now developed other skills such as editing my images using the crop tool, magic wand tool and quick selection tool. These tools allowed me to cut my images out from the background they were on. Therefore I being able to construct a successful image for a front cover of a music magazine allowed me to develop what will be hopefully become a well-known music magazine.

Other tools that I used that allowed me to construct a music magazine front cover were the text editing side of Photoshop. By using the various tools I was able to squeeze the text up similar to that seen on today’s music magazines. I was also able to change the size and font of my writing so that it fitted with what my magazine image was looking for.

The tool I found most useful when I was using Photoshop to construct my music magazine was the fact that could give the text a border to help the writing stand out. The stroke effect helped me to give the text I wanted my target audience to read more than others a more enhanced look. As you can see my text stands out more from the grey background by giving it either a yellow or black border.

I chose to layout my magazine as I did because I have seen that Kerrang and Rock Sound do this and they seem to sell their magazines quite well, therefore if I use a similar layout then my magazine will most probably catch my reader’s attention. I needed to research into existing music magazine that have a similar target audience so that I could get ideas into what I should include in my magazine and how it should be layout, etc.

Throughout my construction of my magazine I asked for feedback of my target audience to see what they liked, disliked and how I should change my magazine. This allowed me to develop my magazine into what I think is a fairly good looking music magazine. Also to make sure my magazine was as good as it could be I made sure my text was spelt correctly and that any corrections were made where possible. By proof reading my text it allowed me to notice where mistakes has been made and it helped me construct a more successful media product.