Evaluation Part 7

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

From comparing my ‘School Magazine’ to my final ‘Music Magazine’ there is a massive difference in the way they look, and the elements I have chosen to use on each. When concerning the colour scheme I would say that my music magazine colour scheme looks much better as the work well together and stand out against each other. My school magazine uses solid colours blue and fuchsia, which would not normally be put together on a magazine because they could come across slightly boring, simple and more childlike whereas this is not the audience my music magazine is aimed at. I think my skills at putting colour schemes together have got much better, especially looking at both magazines. But these skills have improved because I previously researched music magazines within my planning process, which enabled me to realise which colours worked best together and why. My skills for taking pictures on the Nikon cameras has improved as I used them a lot more which allowed me to figure out which settings will be needed for certain images especially, the lighting and aperture. The image i chose to use on the school magazine is extremely simple and the background is slightly dull. When creating the images for my music magazine i thought about the type of image i wanted before i started taking photos, and thought what would fit in with my magazine theme. I had to think about the clothing i would want to be on my model as it would need to link to the magazine along with the background. As the background in my main image is of bricks, i chose this because i wanted the model in the image to attract more attention than the background; however the background links to the reality. I feel that my eye for images on a magazine has improved through my research too. My Photoshop skills have improved the most; this is because i was able to experiment with it and try out new things which then stuck in my memory as i could possibly use certain techniques again. The use of Photoshop looks minimal on my school magazine compared to my music magazine. I learnt how to change aspects of an image and how to use different fonts. The main image on my music magazine in black and white, which is clear to see I have changed it from colour, also certain areas are darker such as the models hair and eye, this too is because I changed the levels and shadows, whereas my school magazine photo has clearly not been changed. Photoshop has allowed me to move texts and images around which make my magazine look more professional because the main sell line stands out against the others sell lines. I learnt the layout of magazines through my research and analysing of successful magazines, which showed me certain areas of which the eye is drawn to which links to the purpose of certain images and texts being in those areas.