Evaluation part 7

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

Looking back at my preliminary task, I can see a huge transition of skills I had at the beginning of the course, and at the end of the course. My abilities have far exceeded my expectations. Although I had a vague idea of what magazine I wanted to create, I didn't have the sufficient resources or skill-set to create what I had planned. However, thanks to the creation of my final magazine I have learnt many skills that has helped me and will help me in the future. I was able to create many different drafts of my magazine, and experiment with different colours and styles. This gave me more of a broader level of skills which I have used through my course. I have learnt to be less safe with my ideas and take risks, which I have done for my final magazine. Ultimately it has led to a much better product which will appeal to my target audience. Photoshop is extremely useful as it allowed me to change my magazine's look COMPLETELY. This was very time-consuming but proved worthwhile in the long run. I knew the idea that I wanted my magazine to have and that was simplistic, with the use of minimal writing and the main image in the middle of the page I knew that research would pay off. Although my magazine genre is Indie, I was able to make it appeal to all audiences, by using different techniques such as different font styles and differnet background colours. Colours also helped me differentiate my work, as I was able to research the different meanings of colours. Red is passion and love, yellow is energy, green is nature etc. Finally, the terminology used throughout the course was very new to me. I didn't know what conglomerate institutions were, but now I have learnt it's meaning I am able to use it in my Media exam work. These conglomerate institutions has one sole leader,(like Time Inc), but controls many smaller brands to further extend profits and audiences. This is all information I was able to obtain subconsciously throughout the course. Finally, I was able to look at how the editor was able to connect with the reader, whether it was with colloquial language or formal text, it allowed me to absorb some of the traits, which I could then go on to use in my magazine. Learning about different aspects of the magazine was really helpful when creating my final piece as well. Things such as sidebars, mastheads, coverlines and more features allowed me to experiment with my magazine and convert my mental knowledge in to physical work easily. This was helpful and allowed me to further apply my knowledge to my work I had already done to make it look much better in my final piece.