Evaluation Question Seven – Looking back at your preliminary task,

what do you feel you have learnt in the progression to your full product?

Preliminary Task front cover and contents page

My music magazine final pieces

Front Cover Comparisons

What I learnt with the photography is, I needed to use a professional SLDR camera if I wanted my photographs to be at a high quality and to look professional. Also, the body language, pose/facial expressions because if you want to attract a particular group, you need to use the right photography. I needed to use the correct facial expression and body position to convey a certain mood/tone to my readers.I learnt that the mode of address is very important as if you want something to stand out and look slightly intimidating ,a direct mode of address is the best thing to do.

With the layout, I learnt that I shouldn't over clutter the front cover with photos and cover lines as it may be off putting for the reader. Another one is to use appropriate colours on the page so it'll attract the reader. Boring colours wont attract young people. Something else I learnt was to make the cover lines and main sell line stand out,I needed to make them short and sweet and put a background around them so it'll attract my reader.

With the fonts, I found that you need to make a font that matches the magazine well. If you want it to be professional and smart, you need aplain and modern font. But if you want something original and something out of the ordinary, you should choose a big and bold font. Also, to make the font stand out, I needed to make it big with solid bright colours because that'll attract my reader if it was on a shelf.

I stuck quite true to my rationale, making sure everything looked good on the page and making sure everything would look good for my target audience. The only reason I didn’t stay true to my it was because I was getting different feedback from people within my target audience and they were giving me tips on what looked good/better and what didn't ’t etc. so I took consideration on what they were saying so it made the magazine more appealing to my target audience.

Contents Page Comparisons

With the photography, yet again I learnt to get the best photographs, I needed to use a decent camera. Also with the mode of address, if I wanted to attract my reader to a particular article in the magazine, a direct mode of address would be the best because it'll catch the readers attention. With my magazine, I thought it would be better to have individual photographs of the main article and this was backed up with student feedback which I got saying this was a good idea, so I learnt that with feedback, for a rock music magazine, it would be good to use individual photographs instead of one big one at the top of the page.

I learnt that keeping the stories in categories makes it look neater and easier for my reader to find what they're looking for. Also it looks better to put them long rows instead of blocks as it makes it look neater. I also learnt that adding some pattern into the background looks better than a plain background which was also backed up by some student feedback I got from a little focus group in my research and planning stages. Keeping the colours the same is a good thing to do as it doesn't look as messy and you can associate them colours with past and future issues.

I learnt that it would be better to have a lot of stories on the contents page because it shows the reader more variety on what they can read and it shows everything that's in so they can find things easier. Also, I learnt that it's better to put them in categories so it makes it easier for my reader to find what they want to read.

I didn’t stay true to my rationale because I asked around to some of my target audience and they didn’t like the idea and they said it wouldn’t work. So I changed it around the different things my peers and people within my target audience said so that I was taking into consideration of what they were saying so it would mean that it was the most appealing that it would be.