Evaluation question 7- looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel

you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I learnt a lot whilst creating both my magazine covers. I knew that my two magazines

were going to be completely different so I already knew that the designs were going to

be different. I researched already existing music magazines similar to my magazine such

as kerrang and RockSound. There are very few magazines that cater to rock/metal

music so I knew that magazine would have to be different and stand out from the others

in order for it to do well. My magazine is aimed at a specific audience where as my

college magazine was aimed at all college students. My college magazine had to be very

formal and neat looking where as my music magazine was informal and edgy looking,

just like the target audience for it.

The only things similar about both magazines are that bright colours are used for the font

and text and there is only one model on the cover and the text is framed around them

making them the focal point.

I used Photoshop to create both magazines. I felt pretty confident using Photoshop as

I’ve used it before so I already knew my way around it quite well. I thought i would

experiment with different tools and see how they worked on my cover. For creating the

college magazine, I stuck to the basic tools which is why it’s quite boring, where as I

used a variety of tools i had never used before such as the ‘text glow’ and ‘colour

picking’ tools.

I think the most important thing I learnt was that only 3 in 10 magazines survive past

their first 4 years of being published so it takes a lot for your magazine to survive. I knew

that my magazine, more importantly SoundCheck, because it’s a magazine that will be

available to all public, not just 1 college so it will be up against already existing music

magazines that have been around for a long time and have a large audience.