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

In the progression from my preliminary task to my finished media product I have learnt a lot about photography, layout, fonts, modes of address, audience etc. 

In comparison from the beginning of the course with my preliminary product I have learnt how to assign pictures correctly to get the best effect and gain the attention of my audience. In my preliminary task I asserted the picture to the right of the front cover of my college magazine with cover lines down one side. I have improved my skills in my media product by centralizing my model on my front cover and putting cover lines around her. 

For my pictures, I have also learnt how to edit them in Photoshop to black and white to fit white my music magazine's theme of gothic rock and appeal more to my audience of the gothic sub-culture.

I also used different styles on Photoshop to make my text stand out against the picture background. I added a white glow behind my text so that it could be read clearly.

With the text I also learnt how to compress it closer together so it made it look more natural and fitted better on the page whereas on the preliminary task the errors where the text overlaps with the shape it's behind is very obvious.

I learnt how to use text boxes to write in so text would be in the structure I want and would not overlap with anything else on the page.

On Photoshop I also learnt how to add a drop shadow to images. This way I improved my contents page from the preliminary task I had done previously. I was able to add a copy of the front of the magazine in the corner of my contents page and with the drop shadow it could stand out against the other images on the page.

With my finished media product I had a wider range of age and gender for my target audience to work from. As I previously made a college magazine it was easy for me to understand my target audience and what would appeal to them, being of the same age. With my finished media product brought a new challenge for me and I found it very interesting to learn about the gothic-sub culture and how they are seen within their communities and outside. In my finished product I used a range of informal and formal language to appeal to my audience. I learnt how to make a magazine look more professional by researching products already made within the media.