Question 7

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

Throughout the task, I have noticed my understanding of the codes and conventions has improved, thus making my product seems better than my original College Magazine compared to my new Music Magazine.

I feel that as I have stuck to a strict plan of what I wanted to do, rather than making it up as I go the along and following a very bare and unhelpful plan, have made this product improve dramatically. Also knowing who I my audience was and doing thorough research on a certain audience which have a very niche set of interests rather than having a wider audience where the only thing in common is there age and occupation. Whereas my music magazine allowed me to go deeper into whom I was making the product for and how I can make it more appealing to them.

Being an amateur, I felt it was vital for me to get to grips with software such as in design and Photoshop and try playing around with different editing styles such as the images and font I used for the text. I only had basic knowledge of both of the editing software so I felt it was vital to keep the product basic and to not over do certain things as this may lead to the product looking over crowded and ‘tacky’.

I felt that the design of the contents went well as I used very little in terms of design and used contrasting colours to get the contents, normally a very dull and un-interesting part of any magazine, to look vibrant and alive even though it is a very basic design. I tried repeating the same ‘Less is Best’ idea to my double page spread. I originally wanted to have the band parodying another famous-ish album cover (I was thinking either London calling by the Clash or Morden World by the Jam) but I was unable due to time restrictions and meeting deadlines. I also believed it would be too time consuming in terms of editing the images. Instead I went with simple the simple route with nothing to fancy and it has come out as I have hoped.

Looking through existing magazines played a large part of my research; this allowed me to make my mind up pn what I was trying to do and how I was going to do. I felt that the minimalistic approach that Q magazine went for looked professional but I didn’t want to take my magazine too seriously so I added more vibrant colours to the cover. Also understanding WHO my audience was played an equal, if not more important, than looking at examples. I felt that I had to get into the head of my audience, this lead to asking members of my target audience of people what they would want to see in the magazine rather than what I felt the audience would like to see.