Main Task: Evaluation FINAL

Q7. Looking back at the preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to a full product?


Since the preliminary task I have learnt many skills in using certain technology, I have also gained some experience in photography and I have gain some knowledge and understanding of how magazines are seem, different varieties, the way the public view them and why certain procedure are taken place.
Looking back at the preliminary task, when making the college magazine, I didn’t have as much knowledge as I have now and I now see it as being armature looking. I didn’t have as much knowledge with the convention and was meant to be included, for example I didn’t add enough cover lines to make the magazine interesting. I didn’t have the skill to use Photoshop enough for me to arrange the quotes in a particular way in which it would have looked professional.

The individuals that were involved were from my class so it made it easier for me to interact with them and tell them what was required. While taking the photos I had a supervisor. At the time I was unaware that the front cover had to be in a certain position and certain things were meant to be showing, whereas during my music magazine task I was already aware of how I wanted certain thing to look like even though I didn’t have full knowledge of how to use the camera, for example I didn’t know that a front cover was meant to be shot portrait and a double spread was meant to be landscape. I found the preliminary task easier to accomplish mainly because I wasn’t aware of any college magazines and I hadn’t come across one until we were shown example of magazine from previous classes and ongoing college magazines.

In addition to this my preliminary task was more targeted to a mass audience so I was able to include certain things that I thought would attract a student from college such as events that would be eye catching and interesting. However when it came to my main magazine I focused more on my audience because it had to be very distinctive because it wasn’t as big of an audience compared to my college magazine. In addition to this I had to put more work into my audience research even though I knew things about my audience but I wouldn’t be enough because it would have been only my understanding , not my audience.

I didn’t focus much on the props or costumes of the individual I used mainly because college was such a broad and diverse group of individuals that it would have been bad to make the people that I involved wear specific cloths, hence the reason why I let them wear whatever they were comfortable in ad what they would normally wear to school. On the other hand when it came to my music magazine because I was focusing on a specific group procedures such as customs and props had to be taken place. This was an important aspect of my magazine because from what I learnt in my preliminary task was that the props helped me to find a colors scheme for my magazine. In addition to this, in my music magazine I had the freedom to choice what my character would wear, I made them wear specific colors, colors that I was comfortable in using when developing on my magazine. In this case I chose colors that varied from brown, white and gold.

Main Task: Evaluation FINAL

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the process of developing my magazine the technologies that I found very useful was PhotoshopCS3. The most common tool that I used was ‘Ctrl+Alt+T’. This helped me to arrange certain things on my page such as boxes and making them symmetrical. While taking my photos I used 893CANON camera. I was able to have an understanding of the length and structure my picture would be, for example for a front cover it would have to be portrait and double spread would be landscape. In addition to this while taking the pictures I was able to control the brightness by moving the light stand closer to the object, this would create an atmosphere that I wanted. Despite the fact that I was standing up most of the time, while doing my double spread picture I wanted the subject laying down. This was very difficult to achieve because it was hard to keep focus and the picture normally ended up turning out blurry.

I found it hard to blog my magazine because I wasn’t aware of blogger and I didn’t understand how to save it as JPEG even though it is now an easy process. I learnt that if it is not saved as JPEG before blogging it would not upload because all the layers used on Photoshop was not in one group or flattered. Similar to this I learnt how to highlight certain objects like different boxes. This gave a similar colour contrast throughout my magazine.