Q7

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

Megan Sanders

• At the beginning of my preliminary task I had never used Photoshop or InDesign before. This is my preliminary task of creating a school magazine before:

• I felt that the preliminary task was okay for a starting point, but my skills have improved whilst doing a country music magazine massively, due to the difference between the magazines, but also with how comfortable I am with the technology of InDesign. I also feel that within my school magazine, I could have done a lot better, as I didn't challenge myself well enough to make my preliminary task better.

• But of course, there were always room for improvements on my finished task of the country music magazine too.

• I also didn't use Photoshop during the preliminary task, but only InDesign and blogger to upload. This shows that I learnt a lot of new things whilst working on the music magazine as I used Photoshop in almost every photo taken. Therefore I feel my music magazine was improved from the preliminary task as I used both programmes rather than the one.I used a range of different editing tools such as changing the contrast within Photoshop on an image, the saturation, using grey scales to change the image to black and white, and cropping an image. I used Photoshop for every image on the contents page, double page spread, and also the front cover, even when it was just doing simple things such as using the brightening tool, turning up the contrast or saturation to make it stand out more to appeal and catch the audience's eye, or turning an image into a black and white image.

• I had to however, withdraw first images of a boy band and change them to a one man artist, as I felt it fit a country artist better, as there are more artists in country music than boy bands, as boy bands are usually referred to as being under the genre of pop music.

• I also learnt on InDesign how to use a pull quote within my double page spread, and I found this extremely good as it helped my double page spread stand out more with a more interesting quote, which would catch an audience's eye.

• Overall, I found the preliminary task a very good and important task within the whole coursework process, as I found whilst learning the techniques and different ways to use InDesign and Photoshop, I didn't realize just how much difference I was actually making from the preliminary task. And now, looking back on it, I realize just how much I had learnt, and how skillful I found using InDesign to be, as I found the full product was a huge progression compared to the preliminary task.