Evaluation of Preliminary Task

What Have I Learnt From Preliminary Task?

The first major thing that I learnt from my preliminary task of creating a magazine is the software I use to create it. I used the very basic programmes of PowerPoint and word documents to create my magazine. I have learnt that there are far better programmes that offer a wider range of features that will help make my magazine look as professional as possible. In the real magazine I will be using In-design for creating the whole magazine and Adobe Photoshop to edit the pictures.

I have also learnt that just placing images onto a magazine has a major affect on the overall look of the magazine. Therefore I will be focusing on the editing on my pictures, mainly cutting out backgrounds and re-sizing images to get the full potential from my images.

The third area that I will be focusing on in my main magazine and something that I have learnt from the preliminary task is the contents page. In this task I only included 8-9 articles spanning over about 20 pages, after analysing it once I had it finished I found that this was not realistic. A customer is not going to spend money on a 20 page magazine, therefore I know that I will have to include an appropriate amount articles and pages in order to attract the customer.  

I am genuinley quite dissapointed with the general outcome of my preliminary task magazine. This is because I feel that I could have made it a lot more professional, through using a variety of different programmes. However I understand that it is better to learn from mistakes in the preliminary task and to learn from them in my main task. One positive aspect from my magazine was the layout of the front cover, I thought the layout looked professional including a variety of images. This is one thing that I will want to ensure I include within my main task that there is a good variety of appealing images. From my general research I have learnt that all magazines attract their audiences through their front cover, therefore in my preliminary it is a different emphasis as it would be given out free to parents and students. In terms of my main magazine I will be advertising for an audience to purchase it, therefore I must make sure that my images that I will take will be attractive and apropiate for the genre of my magazine.

Regarding my contents page I feel that it is very basic looking. In order to improve my main magazines contents I want to make sure there are a sufficent amount of relevant articles, I also want to ensure that it has a professional look. If I was to re do my contents page the one thing I would also like to change is to vary the font sizes. For example if I include a main article that is particularly

attractive to the audience, then I will want to advertise that article as much as possible. A way of improving the advertising of an article is increasing the font size, changing the font to make it stand it. I will also make sure that I include a related image to further advertise an interview for example.