Evaluation of preliminary task

Within this preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt a lot about how to make magazines, and I have

also lost a lot of preconceptions about the magazine industry. I presumed it was easy to make a

professional looking cover, but I found this much harder to do than anticipated.

I feel that I did manage to be successful within this task, as I managed to use all of the research I

collected to make my magazine, resulting in a product which is a joint result of my own ideas and

those of the target audience around me. I also feel like I did apply the conventions of a college

magazine to both my contents and cover, as I created a professional looking cover page which also

manages to be interesting and attractive to the target audience of college students. I think that my

contents page was also successful as it was clear and precise, while also carrying through the themes

I showed on my cover, which included fun and interesting colour schemes, layouts and articles.

In this task I learnt several things. I learnt how to use Adobe InDesign, and I found this quite an

interesting process. At first I didn’t like the programme as it seemed to not make the highest quality

layouts, but after a while I discovered the best ways of using it and now I think it produced a higher

quality design than I would have been able to do with other programs. I also learnt how important it

is to listen to your target audience directly. This is because when I first started doing layout mock-

ups for my magazine, I only followed my ideas from my analysis of other magazines. However, when

I integrated the ideas from the questionnaire the magazine became of a much higher quality and it

became easy to see a clear theme running through the designs, which was something I had been

striving for since the start of the project.

If I was to do this task again, there are few things I would do differently. However, one thing I might

do is to spend more time thinking of more unusual magazine designs. This is because although I like

the layouts I have now, I feel that with the right amount of development they could have been

better, and I think a more unique magazine would have been better for the target audience.

In conclusion, I am happy with the result of this project and look forward to developing my skills

further, but given the opportunity I would revisit this task to create an even better outcome.