What have I learnt in the progression of my product since completing the preliminary task

(college magazine)

College magazine contentsThis is the first contents page I have done. It was for the college magazine we made at the start of the year. This clearly lacks the quality of a professional contents page. It is missing a lot of conventions of a contents page such as the issue number, cover date, website. It does follow some conventions such as having contents written out in large font and it has images coherent to the articles however to summarise it, it just looks poor and tacky. It doesn’t follow codes and conventions as instead of just having the page number it will say ‘page 6’ which isn’t what professional magazines do in their contents pages. The contents page was split into two columns which follows codes and conventions.

College magazine front coverThis is my college magazine front cover, it does have a higher quality than the college magazine contents page however it has many faults. It is missing lots of things that would have made it better such as a puff or the main image having a background. The actual image is not good as it doesn’t overlap the masthead which if the coverstar does go over to it then the coverstar has to go over the top of it. There is a lack of coverlines as it only has three. The text on the skyline doesn’t reach across it and the banner isn’t even filled it just has the barcode and price on it.

Music magazine front coverThere is a big difference between the college front cover and the music magazine front cover. There is a marked improvement in many areas. The skyline includes an incentive which cover the length of the skyline unlike the skyline previously. The banner is filled up with things that would have been in the magazine and it even has a design to the banner not just the block of colour but a whiteline around ‘plus!’ and white blocked bullet points. There is a website above the barcode and an issue number an cover date, these being conventions that were missing on the college magazine front cover. The image is of better quality as it creates a green house style to go with for the rest of the magazine however it also is in a better location with a fascinating background unlike the white canvas that was in the college magazine front cover. There is a full selection of coverlines in this product and the product also includes puffs unlike the college magazine. The skills I have learnt since making the college magazine have been improved. An example of this is using the contrasting tool when editing the image. This made the bright colours brighter and the dark colours darker, making the image generally better. I learnt other photoshop skills these displayed in the puffs. I used the oval tool to make the puff and I edited it to give it an eroded look around it.

Music magazine contentsThis is my music magazine contents page. I learnt many techniques to use on Quark through the production of my products. These new learnt techniques have shown if you compare this latest product with the college magazine contents page. There is a re-occuring house style in this magazine as I have kept with the green colours however this is something that was vacant in the original product. I also developed the structure of the magazine making it more interesting than two simple columns with images placed in different places, four columns, a gap the two halves to feature the masthead. I included a large image this time to feature. Also the page numbers were larger and went with the articles.