Question 7

Question 7: Looking back at the preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt?

During the duration of the project I feel that I have learnt a great deal about the intricacies of creating a concise and unique house style whilst also making all pieces of the product look as if they belong where they are and that they complement each other without any threat of seeming out of place or contradictory to the mission statement or the aims/goals of the product.

Upon looking at my preliminary task I see where many parts of the composition look out of place and are in effect useless in creating/conveying anything I wanted it too, this is because during the task the input from my target audience was minimal and as a result no part of the product would appeal to the people I was trying to fulfil a need for. The contents page was also heavily underworked and left the product as a whole with a rushed/uninspired look which as a result would reflect badly on my/my company’s aims.

The use of colour was very minimal and simplistic and left the magazine very bland and boring like a hospital brochure or a cough medicine billboard, upon looking at my final product I see that the text should be bold and not feel as if it is just floating in the middle of nowhere hoping to catch the eye of the audience but not being bold enough to capture the eye of anyone instead making the cover look very blank and isolated. When it comes to the use of photograph the image features a lone person in the middle of a normal day at the college the problem in this is that he has no direct gaze or confident/interesting look or way of dress which has the effect of just blending in and not capturing the eye of anyone, this in conjunction with the text on the

bottom half of the image gives the cover a more hostile vibe than one of welcoming/comfort. The sidebar of the front cover is better suited to comic books as whilst it does tell the reader what is going to be inside the magazine it makes no effort in standing out and also obscures a significant portion of the image thus making it work against the image and not creating no form of synergy between the two parts of the cover. When looking at my final product I learnt from my mistakes and made the text overlay the picture and have an eye-catching colour in order to draw the attention of the reader and thus hopefully working with the picture to create a concise house style and also act as a shining example of the quality of articles/information that will be presented in the whole of the product.

When drawing attention to the contents page the mistakes are clear as there is a significant lack of images or eye-catching offers which will keep the reader interested and implore them to read farther into the magazine and thus have a high exposure to the advertisements/offers within which would be keeping our product in print and also acting as another example of what there is to come, organising the multiple subjects covered in an organised manner which will help the audience find what they want with ease, keeping a high user satisfaction rate and setting a precedent for later issues creating a large and continuous reader base. The contents page from my final product used images which related to what the magazine is about and as a result kept consistency with the front cover which also featured products relating to the content of the product. Near the bottom of the page there is a special offer which is for a guitar, this relates to the magazine as it is about music and hopefully this offer will attract the attention of the reader as it is to do with the dual subjects of the magazine(technology and music).My feature article was the first I had ever made so there is no possible way it could be an improvement over the others I had made but due to the experience I had and the examples I found I managed to create a double page spread which kept the house style and both worked towards satisfying the target audience and informing them of the life of a person in a career which a certain portion of them might want to pursue or work towards.