QUESTION 6Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Many skills and methods were learnt and tested when creating the preliminary magazine that were used and not used to create the music magazine. Firstly when reviewing the magazines I found through focus groups and evaluation of the student magazine that the use of a puff that signified that the magazine was a special edition gave the magazine an extra features that would make it more appealing and unique to other magazines on the market. Also it allowed the magazine to have a character which was needed as it is a first edition and consumers didn't trust the brand to give a exiting topic that would appeal to them. Another feature of the puff is that it allowed the cover lines and articles on the contents page have a similar theme meaning the magazine avoided a list of topics that didn't fit with each other leading an unprofessional expression to the reader. Therefore this feature was carried over to the music magazine with the same style that stood out the consumer.When creating the student magazine I found that text didn't stand out and was unclear with the background image especially with a background setting of a library. This is where I learnt the skill of 'adding glow' to the text therefore allowing the text to be seen clearly. This was a useful skill to know when making the music magazine as I quickly could produce cover lines and main image.Another feature that was reused was the header and footer with it following the colour scheme with the different coloured text and box, giving a clean neat finish to the product. This was more utilised in the music magazines as it gave the opportunity to show that the magazines are modern with rounded edges and positioning. Furthermore the use of different font styles and colours that was originally produced in the student magazine was useful as it empathized the 'madness' theme that I wanted as it gave the impression that there was a lot going on and that there is a large amount of content in the magazine.An improvement from the student magazine to the music magazine is the layout of the magazine and its effectiveness in drawing the consumer. I learnt this through the research of music magazines. I found that the layout gives a strong impression to the reader about what the magazine is like and how it relates to the genre. However I did not know this information when creating the student magazines shown by the disorganised cover lines. This was improved by the music magazine as the layout around the main image giving an impression of 'madness' that is a desirable theme to run an events that predominantly use dance music.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SzoG8u4iYSw/VQ_7jvVvrKI/AAAAAAAAFrg/DE2vOu8jEXw/s1600/Contents%2Bpage.jpg

The skills and the presentational feature of both contents pages were similar. I found that the presentational features of the student magazine fitted with themes and the main topic. So carried this information over to the draft of the music magazine contents page, meaning that iconography and text font had to convey the themes of the magazine. Another feature is that I felt that the list of the main articles in the contents section flowed nicely making it easy for the reader to understand. With the use of custom shapes attention was brought to the main purpose of the page and added to the page to prevent it being bland and boring the reader. Also I found that the font must be easy to read and possess an interesting font to keep the reader intrigued.A difference in the two products is that on the student magazine I used a compilation of photos as the background as it works with the themes of the magazine. However I did not use this for the music magazine as I felt I could not achieve the photos needs to fit the genre. If unlimited resources of a music magazine an image of a concert from a stage view looking at the audience would be used to relate to the genre. This could not be achieved so a light blue background was used with a gradient effect to give depth and allow the text and images to be seen clearly.The colour scheme of the pages is similar in terms of utilising bright colours to draw the readers attention to important information such as the top articles or images. For example the list of contents is centred and uses bright colours, which also links to the college colour scheme, to attract the eye. This is similar to the music magazine as the editorial uses a bright yellow pattern to attract the eye and uses effect on text allowing a white border to text on a light blue background.