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

I have learnt alot since my preliminary coursework. On my preliminary cover, I unintentionally stretched my image to fit the scaling on my canvas, this resulted in an image that is shorter and fatter than it should be. By the time I produce my final front cover, I used a number of photoshop tools to digitally enhance my image and had learnt how to resize, crop, remove etc. This allowed me to produce a much more professional background. The main way I used photoshop on my Prelim cover was to basically type the text in different colours over the image. I had only two layers on my cover, one being the image and the other the text. On my new cover, I discovered that I had at least 20 layers and quickly learnt to name my layers so that I knew which one was which.

I did not use any effects on my Prelim which is why it did not look as professional as my main cover. My masthead is very basic on the first cover compared to my effects driven second cover. I learnt much more about photoshop itself and the codes and conventions of magazines which improved my second cover considerably.

I also learnt more about how a magazine works, the interaction of the cover, contents page and articles. I realised how these elements are connected and all have to be cross-referenced. Having researched magazines, I began to understand how headlines and cover lines are worded and presented for maximum shelf impact. While researching further after my prelim, I realised how important relevant, striking images are. Photography was not my area of strength but I now appreciate a good strong image. Another important element of a magazine is to have a striking masthead as people will only see the left hand side of the magazine on the shop shelves.

I learnt that the magazine industry is huge and that there are many music magazines out there, it is a competative genre but one with many niche markets is bound to be successful. The music magazine market is dominated by a few large publishing companies and it was interesting to see which other magazines (non musical) these companies produce. I have learnt that paper products link with online methods to maximise their potential and that the online magazines do not create any threat to paper products.

Overall I learnt that alot of planning goes into producing something that looks simple.

My Prelim cover

 

My main cover