Final Evaluation Question 7

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

 The changes and improvements in my cover were very drastic. The overall quality of my product has vastly improved and this makes the magazine look a lot better. The main improvements were the photography and the typography. As you can see in my preliminary school cover the font size is very large and the fonts do not match each other, their is too much contrast and all the fonts are out of proportion and out of line with each other. This gives it a less proffesional feel. I had to improve this with my final piece as I wanted to reach my full potentially and creating something that looks proffesional and feels realistic. I belived I have achieved this as my font choices are much better and the smaller size makes it look aesthetically pleasing. The long rugged fonts also fit my rock and roll genre as they are quite messy and casual.

The main improvement with my contents page was the layout choice. I decided to choose only one main picture for the page and have a strip displaying the actual features and contents of my magazine. This is much more appealing than my preliminary contents as the text isnt all scattered, it is organised and layed out correctly so the reader can easily follow down the side to find a specific piece of content they want to read. This makes my content as much more efficient page, but it also makes it much more aesthetically pleasing.


My camera shots in the front covers have changed drastically. First of all, in my preliminary task my model wasnt even looking at the camera, her face was not revealed, this reduced the impact the shot could of had, which overall made it seem less proffesional. Compared to my final front cover shot, my model is looking at the camera and the lighting is a lot better and the shot has an overall better quality. Making the page feel cleaner. I have stuck with a mid-shot for my magazine as I feel it is the best way to represent a model on the front cover, without making them too big or small. The cutting out on my shots in my final product was much better also, as you can see there is a massive difference in my preliminary task and my final magazine. There are no jagged lines that make the magazine look amatuer. The pictures remain clean and therefore give my magazine a much more proffesional feel.

The layout of the magazine as a whole has also improved lots, for example the spacing and size of my coverlines changed from my preliminary magazine to my final. This made them smaller and spaced together much more making the cover seem more bunched and full, this stops any vast amounts of space being used. The cover lines have also increased in quantity as from looking at my school magazine I felt that it was way too bland and boring, nothing exciting was there to catch a readers' eye. This is why I used the more ambitious and outrageous fonts to represent bands in my cover lines for my final front cover.

The most significant learning curve I found was my ability to expand into a more, confident, and varied style. Taking specific examples from my preliminary and my final task. I managed to develop my skills on photoshop (and within photography itself) to allow a much better finished product. Even smaller details like the date and issue numbers on the cover. As you can see the font is very small on my final, yet very large and unneccesary on my preliminary task, little details like this have hopefully gave my final product as much better finished look. I also went for a much more generic colour scheme on my final product, this allowed me to get a guarenteed proffesional look, I did this because I learnt from my preliminary task that those colours I chose were making my magazine look childish/amatuer.

I believe I have also imnproved significantly with my magazine terms. Learning these by looking at severl other similar magazines allowed me to learn what is needed to make a successful house style. This is shown through my font sizes from the preliminary school magazine task to my final magazine. As the fonts are very large with non-standard spacing between them, this made the pages look empty and spacious. This would put off a reader as they would not think the magazine contains that much information as it is so empty. Whereas my final font choices and spacing fit the genre really well and make the overall page look filled with information.

Here are the examples of the different cover line fonts and spacing, this shows how much of an improvement I have made from my preliminary task to my final product.

I am very happy with how my coverlines turned out, I feel that have a raw and intense feel that fits with my genre and style. I especially like the specific fonts for different bands. This makes them stand out and fans of the band will be instantly drawn in as they would recognise the band font/logo.