Evaluation

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

The left image is of the front cover from my preliminary task. The right image is the front cover of my music magazine main task.

Personally, I feel that my full product presents a substantial progression and improvement to that of my preliminary task; it looks much more professional and more like an actual magazine cover. This is understandable as the preliminary task in my eyes was solely to learn the basics of Photoshop which I could then apply to my final piece. I am usually quite a purist when it comes to the presentation of a piece of work. Firstly, I have to have the different colour schemes coinciding well together. It is clear to see that my purism faltered somewhat for the preliminary task as the colours all clash and don't blend in well together like they should. They made the cover page appear too busy, even though there isn't actually much going on. This contrasts with my carefully thought out colour scheme of red, black and white on my full product. This colour scheme will gain more audience attention, as the fair distribution of three different colours would cause audience attention to move all over the page.

My full product gave me the opportunity to take the features of Photoshop I had recently become accustomed to and expand on them. For example, I was able to tidy up my cover lines by using a tool which brought the gap between the smaller fonts closer together; whereas on my preliminary task the cover lines were very spaced out. Furthermore, for my preliminary task I used the basic eraser tool and the quick selection tool to cut out the models from the background. I then used the blur and smudge tools to get rid of any pixilation around the edge of the image. This caused the edges to look too fine and therefore unrealistic. It was then that I decided against cutting out my model's image from the background in my final piece because her hair style was so wacky that it would have turned out the same as the preliminary task image did. I therefore decided to photograph my model standing in front of a plain wall.

There is a lack of information on my preliminary task front cover, therefore it doesn't give a good insight into the magazine's content. It doesn't either make the audience aware of the magazine's

genre. In my main product, however, I have included a wide variety of information regarding the magazine's content. This will raise more audience interest.

The fonts used within my full product are much more professional and sophisticated. I found the font style of my preliminary task very childish. The contrast of the brick background and the blue and black text colouring on my preliminary task is somewhat unappealing. I find that the use of a black and red font on my full product with the natural yellow coloured background makes it a lot legible for the audience to read and generally more attractive.

I didn’t include any date, price or barcode on my preliminary task front cover which didn’t make it look like a genuine magazine. The fact that the magazine had no real structure either, made it look unprofessional as all the features were just randomly spaced out and dotted about the page. For my main product, I took more time and consideration into the order of presentation to make it neat and a lot more legible.

My skills development have been demonstrated through the use of new features and tools within Photoshop for the final piece. For my full product, I made particular use of the style, blending options tool on my text to make it more prominent and bold to the audience. Using this tool, I was able to add a number of shadow and glow effects to whatever I wanted. My editing skills of the photographs have been improved as I searched for and found the adjustments feature which gave me the opportunity to mess around with the vibrancy and brightness and contrast etc. I didn't make use of any effects to edit the images in my preliminary task.

When preparing for my main task, I made sure that I took a detailed look into professional magazine covers on the internet and in shops. I did this to make my final piece look as realistic and professional as possible. By looking at a variety of magazines, I was able to view different layouts used and think up a good, convincing and appealing design for my own piece.

I found the contents for my preliminary task quite boring to look at with the plain white and orange background. I don’t feel that there was enough detail on the page and the images down the side were the only feature that made it look interesting; however, even they weren't very appealing as

they looked as though they’d just been copied and pasted with no editing on the brightness and no border going around them to make them really stand out. The font size for the list of contents was far too big and I only stuck to one colour for the title and the contents which would have made it appear too 'samey' from the demographics' perspective. The design as a whole was just too simple as the page looked almost empty. There was nothing on it that really caught the eye. I wasn’t very ambitious with the structure, making it very uninteresting. I think I was trying to play it too safe as I was new to Photoshop and didn’t want to ruin any work I’d already created.

I feel that my music magazine contents page is a great deal better as there is more to view on the page in comparison to my preliminary task contents; therefore it looks a lot more busy. I have worked very hard on the structure by following professional magazines online and including a "features" column and an "every month" column. I have also used a colour scheme of red and black which resembles the colour scheme of my front cover. I made sure that for this contents page I kept the text very small so that it didn't take up the amount of space the text did on my preliminary task.

It generally looks more carefully thought out with each feature being placed in its own section. I have placed subtle borders around both my images to make them more prominent on the page.