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

Research & Planning

How have your skills developed and what benefit has this had on your work? I have developed my skills in a range of ways. Before I started the

main task, I knew how to do certain things in Photoshop and InDesign but I had never sat down and taken the time to learn the ins and outs of the program. I had used Photoshop for a few things at home but nothing major and therefore knew only certain methods of editing. After using Photoshop a great deal in my main print task, I have followed tutorials on editing pictures and have learnt a lot about how the program itself works and have been able to apply it to my magazine task.

My skills developing have benefited my work by allowing me to create a more professional looking product while still using the same program, just with different skills. InDesign for example allowed me to design the pages with the layout that I wanted, and Photoshop has allowed me to create some great photo effects which I can then apply to future work.

Did you produce work more in line with professional practice as you have a more detailed understanding of the forms and conventions of real media products?

I believe I have produced my magazine in a style and with the conventions of a much more professional quality in line with current magazines. After exploring other magazines and what they had to offer, I found that I began wanting to include these things and making drafts that included key elements. When I analysed indie magazines, I found a key element was a “Sticker” on the front-page that included special features. I felt this was really eye-catching and so included it in my own work. I believe the standard of my work has increased and it is more in line with a professional product than my initial task was.

The Photographs used in these magazines were all of ultra-high quality, so I wanted to mimic this in my magazine and as such I sourced a really high quality camera from a friend to take the pictures with.

Did you manage your time better? My first task I was quite lazy with initially because I

felt that I could just do it all towards the end and not bother too much with it and still produce a good product. I realised for my main task that I wanted to improve my product greatly and so I set myself deadlines and made sure I stuck to them. I paced my work throughout the duration of the deadline set by my teacher so that I could complete work throughout without getting too bogged down with it all. I made sure to plan all my work before I started it for instance with drafts so that I wasted less time on the actual production stage.

Was your work well planned? I think that I planned my work out quite well. At the start of the

project, we were given a checklist of what we had to do and one of the first things I did was break it down into sub-categories and different tasks that I wanted to achieve within certain time frames. I set myself dates for each task to be completed by. I made sure to draft all of my work before doing it and to make sure that when I sat down to work on the project that I knew exactly what I wanted to do and how I would go about doing it? I looked into roughly how long it would take me to complete each task, and then set time aside for myself to ensure that I would be focused while working on it. If I was to do the task again, I would do the tasks in a different order as some of the things I had done later on could of helped me out greatly in some of the earlier tasks. I feel I could of planned slightly better in this instance because of that.

Construction

Comparing Initial Task to the Main Task

Initial

Main

Comparing the Initial Task to the Main Task Looking back at my Initial Print Task, its easy to see that my Main Task

has improved a great deal because of my increased knowledge and the use of Photoshop. I previously used Publisher for mine and you can tell just by looking at the two next to each other. The Main Print Task has a much more interesting front cover image in a much higher quality and resolution. This helps to create a much more professional look to it. My Initial Task doesn’t play around with typography and sticks to a few fonts I already knew. I feel experimenting with typography has been a key element into making the task more professional.

After completing the Main Task, I feel that I didn’t research the conventions of a school magazine in enough detail. I believe for the Main Task I have spent a lot more time researching and finding out more about what I was producing and my target audience. Finding more about your target audience helps a great deal as you can refer to them for feedback all the time and to make sure your sculpting your product for them and not for yourself.

How did your skills develop using software and hardware and how has this improvement been evident in your work?

Using software and hardware different from what I used for my Initial task, I have been able to develop my skills greatly. I didn’t have any idea how some of the more complex cameras work when I first started the project and now I know how to adjust the settings accordingly to capture the best quality image for the situation. I have read tutorials and watched YouTube clips some of which I have included on my blog which have helped me to learn all the different techniques I can apply to the photos and the magazine itself. I used Photoshop to edit all my photos. This is evident in all my pictures, especially the ones on the double page spread. I went for a Vintage-look on these images and so it is very easy to see how I have edited them. I have also uploaded all my original and edited images onto my blog which you can see the changes I have made. I played around with an array of different online tools that allowed me to create power points online, such as Prezi and SlideShare, and word displays such as Worldle. I Explored the use of a TTS(Text to Speech) website .