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

As you can see, the differences between both my college magazine front cover and my music magazine front cover have a lot of developments and variations. To begin with, if we focus on the language and text on both covers, you will be able to see that my college magazine is very vague an d basic. The alignment of the text isn’t correct, as some is centred and some is on the left. This makes the work look very mismatched and unorganised, which could also lead to the front cover looking quite childish. If my preliminary task had been to create a magazine for primary school children, this could have been more appropriate as it would have represented that social group. However, because it was aimed at college students whose age range varies between 14 and 40, it would have been much suitable to ‘right align’ my text as I have with my music magazine. If you compare the coverlines in both, you will see that my music magazine looks a lot neater and more professional.

Following on from my last point, I think there is also a clear difference in the degree of development with my masthead. Whilst I have kept the date in the same area, the colours and effects I have used are completely different because they are trying to get a different effect. My college magazine is clearly not aimed at 21-25 year olds by the use of a heavy drop shadow effect and the typeface used. It’s very bubbly and fun which represents the target audience of college students. However, my music magazine still uses a Serif font but the typeface is my slimmer and sleeker. This in itself contributes to the representation of my target audience. It looks very feminine and girly, especially in the colour it is in, and this has been done to attract the right social groups.

As you can see with the images I have used, the photograph I took for my music magazine is much more effective. The camera shot is a medium close up rather than a close up which I think gives the audience a lot more to look at and to focus on. The model is wearing a specific costume and is holding a prop that represents my genre of music – indie. This makes the music magazine look more professional and the use of colour has also been tied in with the text throughout my work, which also gives it credibility.

My college magazine image has been poorly cut out and placed onto a white background rather than me having photographed it on a white background. This detracts from the efficiency of font cover, whereas my music magazine image has been shot onto the background I wanted. Again, making it look much more professional. I also did not choose the clothing for my model in my college magazine and therefore I could not properly represent college students.

Another thing that I have developed whilst constructing my music magazine is the way in which I have presented and posed my model. Here you can see that my model looks like a musician as she is holding a microphone and is singing into it. This is something I could compare to existing media products because I think that the pose could be found in other magazines like NME or Rolling Stone. I have specifically set my model up to look like this so that it attracts an audience. Whereas in my college magazine, the original photo was of the model standing against a tree which I later cropped and cut out. This has no relevance to college life at all and therefore upon seeing it, an audience wouldn’t recognise that it was about college.

The developments between my contents pages are very vast as there are some aspects I enjoy about both of them. To start with, the use of my images are a lot more effective in my music magazine than they were in my college magazine. The reason being is that when taking my photos for my college magazine, I didn’t really think about what would be appropriate to include. As you can see, all 4 images used do not tie in with college or necessarily college life at all. The pictures consist of my model standing against a tree, shopping and eating food. Whilst these may be things a college student can do, it doesn’t actually show the audience anything about college life inside of the campus, and therefore it isn’t going to attract the intended audience. Another fault I have is the fact I have used the model in every single photo across my contents page which should really have only been used in one, if any at all. In existing media products, you do not see the main feature appearing in every single photo on the contents page.

My music magazine is a lot more efficient in terms of it’s images because I have used ones that relate back to the coverlines on my front cover and other ones besides my model. I have included my musician in two images across the double page spread but this is because on my front cover, I had coverlines associated with her, so they are there for a particular purpose. I have included a variation of coverlines which will attract the audience in and I have made sure to address all the issues previously mentioned on my front cover. The layout is completely different to that of my college magazine which I enjoy looking at because it is quite different. It has a very simplistic yet effective design which will be easy for the reader to navigate around and collect all the information they need. Whist I do like the layout of my folios on my college magazine and I think it looks very similar to most magazines, I wanted my music magazine to represent my genre, which I think it does.