7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have

learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Research and PlanningIn this section of production in my preliminary task I looked briefly at two existing Sixth Form/College magazines to get an overall gist of what they are like, as I had no previous experience with that genre of magazine. However, the key difference between this and my final production is that my preliminary task research was very brief. I didn’t go into half as much detail as I did in my final production.

This is ½ of my research into Sixth Form front covers – I

didn’t look at contents pages or double page spreads.

I have learnt that there is a need for relevant research into the genre of magazine that I am studying, and much more than I produced for my preliminary task.

I carried out detailed analysis into every element of a magazine’s front cover, contents page and double page spread from 3 different existing music magazines in a variety of genres. This ultimately gave me a great idea of all the conventions of magazines, to add to my prior knowledge from the Preliminary task. For example, I now know more about how magazines use some features to attract their target audience – something I had not really thought of when I was completing my preliminary task.

Planning and Drafting• Planning and Drafting work is essential for any piece of work, therefore I used when making my preliminary

task and my final production.

• However, for my final production I created a ‘Flat Plan’ for the whole of my magazine, if I was to create a full magazine. This is useful as it means you can come up with magazine article ideas, and spread them out evenly so that the first 20 pages are not just on one type of category (e.g. Tour dates)

• It’s also good to have as it is what professional magazine editors use, so it makes my magazine more professional, and realistic.

In my opinion, I think that the lack of professionalism in my Preliminary task is quite easy to point out, so by drafting my ideas beforehand, and using a flat plan has helped eradicate this for when I made my final production.

Preliminary task drafts Final production drafts

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contents page, mainly because I had to think of articles pretty much on the spot, an then adding page numbers and small descriptions

etc. But using the flat plan got rid of this hassle, and although I still think my contents page is still my weakest area, it is much better

than the one in my Preliminary Task because I learnt how professionals tackle the same problem. (Drafting and Flat plans)

Editing and Design• As I have previously mentioned, InDesign was a completely new software to me but the basics of it were

fairly easy to pick up because of some similarities to Photoshop – which I had prior experience with.

• This meant that the first time I use InDesign was when I was making my Front Cover and Contents page for my Preliminary task. Unsurprisingly, this was a tough task, but this is what improved my knowledge of InDesign as it’s certainly a software that you get better at using with more and more practice.

• In the long run, this practice was extremely helpful because going into the final production without any practice would have been even more difficult.

• To improve my skill when using InDesign, I watched short tutorials to boost my ability to use tools such as Text Wrap – another frequently used tool in real magazine production.

Text Wrap tutorial

One thing I learnt when using Photoshop is to use appropriate filters (if any) when editing my images. Using radical filters are not suitable for the majority of magazines, especially Indie Rock magazines that are typically more ‘chilled’ and wont stick out as much as other music magazine genres.

In my Preliminary Task I used a filter on my Front Cover image which in hindsight doesn’t really suit a College magazine, and comes across as a bit ‘cheesy’ – which I have been told by peers who have scrutinized it. This constructive feedback helped me make sure I didn’t do the same mistake again. Instead, I used more subtle adjustments to my images; in particular my dominant cover image as it’s the most important image.

Photography skills • I study Photography AS, so taking good quality photos for all of my pages was a strength of mine, in my

opinion. The skill involved in my photoshoot for my preliminary task was a lot less compared to my final production. For example, a lot less time went into it, so backgrounds were poor and there were a lot more shots that were out of focus. Luckily, the theme was Sixth Form for my preliminary task, so costume and backgrounds was not too much of an issue because I was able to get pictures without leaving my Sixth Form.

• However, when it came to my final production, I put more care and time into my photoshoots so that I got a more impressive portfolio, which in turn gave me more of a choice when choosing which images would make it into my magazine. One thing that I did is I planned ahead what photos I needed, when I can take them and where I can take them. This made this process much easier and efficient. For example, planning to go to the Northern Quarter, Manchester as it’s a gloomy place that fits with all the connotations of Indie Rock. It also fitted into the fictional story that the artist ‘Duvat’ grew up around there, so it was a flashback to his child life.

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• This is one of the key stages of magazine production. Distributing is how the magazine gets seen and to maximise the potential of this so that it gets to a mass audience is by choosing marketing and distribution companies carefully so that they offer this.

• In my preliminary task, I didn’t even consider who may distribute my magazine, mainly because Sixth Form magazines don’t tend to be put in shops, and will usually be self-distributed in the surrounding area of the school. However, a music magazine has the potential to be distributed on a much larger scale if successful, so I had to think about this.

• As I said in question 3, I decided that I would use an institution called ‘MarketForce’ who are owned by Time Inc. UK, and distribute all their magazines and more. As they have experience in publishing and distributing some of the major music magazines such as NME, they were an easy choice for me.

• Marketing within a magazine can involve putting adverts in the magazine, as page fillers and the chance to increase revenue. Again, I didn’t consider what adverts to put into the preliminary task as I never created a flat plan, however I would probably include ads of shops in the local area if I was to decide now.

• In my final production, I studied multiple different music magazines, some of which are similar to my genre (e.g. NME, Q & Vibe). I did this to get the gist of what type of adverts get into the magazine and how often they appear. I then carefully selected brands that I thought would be of interest to my target audience (e.g. Park life and HMV)

Marketing and Distribution

Comparing the Front Covers

Preliminary task Final production

• One obvious improvement is the layout of the whole page. My final production looks much like a professional front cover than my preliminary task.

• For example, I have evenly distributed the cover lines, rather than putting them all on one side.• A flash doesn’t suit my Indie Rock genre as I think it looks too ‘tacky’, it also looks very out of place on my

Preliminary Task, so I didn’t want to use it again. In place of this, the big ‘+’ is much more suited to my magazine. I got inspiration for this from an NME front cover that I was using as research.

• I haven’t used a ‘cheesy’ filter for my final production, as my target audience are of an age where filters like the one I used on my preliminary task are not appropriate.

• I have used more conventions of magazines. For example, a skyline to feature extra info, and a barcode so the magazine is purchasable if published.

• My use of typography has also improved in multiple ways. For example, I used website dafont.com to download more interesting, extravagant fonts that still look ‘Indie’ for my masthead and lead coverline. I have also used different sizes and font families for the other cover lines

Comparing the Contents Pages

Preliminary task Final production

• I thing the change in quality is larger for my contents page than for my front cover. I think that everything about my final production is better

• The layout firstly is much more sensible and professional. • I have multiple images of different people, rather than 2• The column effect makes it much easier to read – as well as continuing the colour scheme, where as my

Preliminary task didn’t do this

• Smaller details like making the page numbers appropriate sizes

• Staying with font families• Adding the date of the

issue• Writing a short paragraph

as the note from the editor, which is commonly used in professional magazines.

• No big blank spaces• The additional images

merge into the background because of how I edited them, where as the images on the Preliminary task look completely out of place because of sloppy editing.

• Added a website link –multiple platforms

• Categorising the articles: Features or Exclusives

• Separating them with black lines