7) Looking back at your preliminary task – what do you feel you have learnt about it in the progression from it to the full product?

My finished copy of my preliminary task:

The technologies that I used for my preliminary where very limited compared to the ones I used for my music magazine. For my preliminary task, I only used Desktop Publishing and created and designed everything using that. My preliminary task was to make a school magazine and I based it on my school. I had to use original images and I designed it around my school colours. I used blue and white and included the school’s logo so that it gives it an identity and everyone knows what school the magazine is about. The colour scheme also works well with the school and creates a link between the magazine and the school. One of the main differences between my preliminary task and my music magazine is the amount of research that I was able to do for each task. I was able to do more research for my music magazine rather than my preliminary task. This enabled me to understand my audience better and therefore construct a much more focused production.  

The preliminary task was a quite simple to construct. Manipulating the images wasn’t difficult because all I had to do was crop and resize them, unlike my music magazine where I had to airbrush them and use all sorts of different buttons to manipulate the image. Desktop Publishing is quite a simple programme to use so it wasn’t difficult to make the magazine look realistic. Also, I didn’t get a lot of time to work on the preliminary task as much as I got for my music magazine. I also had to create a contents page for the preliminary task as well as one for the magazine. I had to do a double page spread for my music magazine, but wasn’t required to do one for my preliminary task.

The programmes that I had to use for my music magazine were really complicated compared to Desktop Publishing so I was at a disadvantage because I did not know how to use it well and couldn’t produce the work to a professional standard. 

I’ve feel that my magazine has progressed a lot more than my preliminary task. With my magazine I spent a lot more time thinking about codes and conventions and where things belong and what to kind of things I should include. With my preliminary task on the other hand, there wasn’t as much thought put into it. It was also a lot easier to take pictures for my preliminary task than for my music magazine and I didn’t need to take as much for my preliminary task  as I did for my music magazine. A lot of thought was put into the type of shots and the positions people had to stand for my music magazine whereas for my preliminary task I didn’t consider them as much. Also, the difference between my preliminary task and my music magazine is that I did not edit the pictures at all which gave it a more realistic school kind of magazine unlike my music magazine which editing the images gave it a more professional look.