Skills Development

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

When I first started the course I had very little knowledge on how to use Photoshop. When creating my preliminary task I kept to the basics as this is all I knew at the time. I experimented with different fonts and colours to make my front cover look appealing and not so noticeable that I didn’t have a big knowledge on how to work Photoshop. I found that the preliminary task was a helpful task for me to do as it enabled me to develop some basic Photoshop skills before it came to creating my main task work.


Once I had gotten used to working Photoshop I then was able to experiment with adding shadow/reflection to my magazine name and also play around with the blending options. I also played around with different fonts and added drop shadows and outer glow to my coverlines in order to make them stand out more on the page.

In terms of my audience appeal for each magazine, the preliminary task had a much wider audience appeal as it needed to appeal to all students and not just specific students where as with my music magazine, I needed to make sure the layout, colours, fonts and everything mentioned on my magazine cover was specifically appealing to a particular sub-culture I had chosen my magazine to be aimed at.

Both the preliminary task and the main task required research of existing texts and magazines as I found that each magazine required different formalities and jargon specific to its own genre. For the preliminary task I needed to research other college magazines in order to find out what topics and coverlines they featured in their magazine.

For the main task I not only had to research music magazines but focus on specific music magazines that were the same or similar to the genre of music I had chosen to do which was 'pop music'.

In terms of my need to seek feedback, for the preliminary task I designed a questionnaire in which I got people to fill out in order to gather their opinion on what would make the ideal college magazine. For my music magazine I found that I wouldn't be able to do the same and create a questionnaire because I was aiming at a specific audience in a sub-culture so instead I researched 'pop music' and created my magazine based on an audience profile I had come up with on what my target audience would want to see and be interested in.