Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?Front Cover

Masthead: On my student magazine I opted for a central masthead whilst on my music magazine I had it on the left hand side.

Header/Footers: I found through my research that I lot of music magazines have a header to advertise competitions or freebies, by having it on a black background also helped the readers notice it better, rather than having it on the busy background my student magazine demonstrates. I didn’t put any footer text on my student magazine, which makes it look a bit odd, as the readers might expect more information there. Whilst on my music magazine helps make the picture look framed, gives out more information and fits in with the style, overall making it look more professional.

House style: With my student magazine I tried to keep to 3 colours but thought it looked more interesting by adding a couple more colours, however by looking at my music magazine, which has stuck to just 3 colours, personally I believe it looks a lot more professional than the student magazine.

Fonts: With my student magazine I used a range of fonts to again make it look more interesting, but for my music magazine only used 2 fonts heavily, with a 3rd one here and there. I personally believe by using a smaller range of fonts makes it look more professional than using a wider range, and still make it look interesting with a smaller range.

Main Image: I put a lot more thought into my music main cover image, as I wanted it to fit in with indie pop/rock. Compared to my student magazine where I just had to take a picture of a student looking happy. With my music one, the whole mise-en-scene had to appeal to a unisex audience and fit into the indie pop/rock genre, by making it look like a music based image. I used Rule of Thirds on both.

Coverlines: With both magazines I had to use a range of coverlines that appealed to both genders, they are different due to the different genres of magazines. For my music magazine I followed a style of having main headers in capitals and little information about it in lower case, whilst in my student one I did this but not for all, and didn’t follow a certain style/pattern.

Price/Barcode/Issue No: I found that making this part of the cover smaller, and out of the way, it made for more space to coverlines and to make them bigger. By having the date quite big on my student magazine, draws the readers attention to it, being such a low price, whilst through my research music magazines are more expensive, I made it smaller, so they wouldn’t notice it as quicker as some of the more major coverlines, on the cover.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?Contents Page

Rule of Thirds: In my student magazine there is evidently no use of this main convention, I didn’t follow it making it seem less professional just by not using that. Whilst in my music magazine I had set-up gridlines to ensure I followed Rule of Thirds, as I didn’t want to do the same mistake. It does help make my layout clearer and more professional.

Masthead: For my student magazine my masthead took a lot of room at the top, leaving hardly any for the rest on the page, I didn’t want this to happen on my music magazine, so made it a lot smaller, to fit in more content, leaving less white space.

Layout: Clearly on my student magazine there is a lot of white space, highlighting lack of coverlines for my readers, whilst my music one is very busy with a lot of coverlines suggesting a more interesting magazine, to satisfy readers more. A lot of my pictures and coverlines on my student magazine is crammed together with hardly any spacing between the two, which ironic considering how much white space I still have left. For the music page it can look crammed together but with the more information, lets it come across more professional.

House style: Same applies for my front covers where I have stuck to a house style for one but not for the other. I found that having a house style adds to professionalism, and can still make it look interesting whilst having a bunch colours would do that but not look professional.

Fonts: Similarly with the front covers, by using a big range of different fonts helps make it look interesting but more professional. By only using a small range of fonts helps keep it professional and interesting at the same time.

Images: They follow different genres so the images are majorly different, obliviously I had to have more people related pictures highlighting the fact they are relating to the different artists of the genre. Use of both pages images, share a suitable link with their captions. I could have made my images a lot bigger on my student page, to fill up the white space, which I found out due to my music page.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?Double Page Spread

By analysing a lot of double page spreads before producing one helped me follow all the conventions, into making a professional one. Although for my preliminary task I didn’t get to create a double page spread, I had used the same programme for the production my content pages, so I was familiar with the tools and how to use them confidently, to make this on the first go. I have stuck to the house style, and the black/white images to keep up with the professionalism of the product on the whole. For my first attempt I personally believe I haven't done that bad, as it links with my other two pages and follows the conventions. If I could get another shot at this I would progress it into changing a few aspects like, maybe keeping to one full page image on the right hand side, put the magazine name/masthead and the date by the page number, I could even write a longer article.