Looking back at your preliminary task (student magazine), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
SWOT analysis
These are a few bullet points, showing what I have learnt from my preliminary task to improve my music magazine (final product)
STREGNTHS
o Since creating my student magazine, I have improved my knowledge of using in design. When creating my student magazine task I had never used in design before. So by using them for my preliminary task this helped me develop my skills hugely, and I gained confidence on the programme. This helped my when creating my music magazine, as I knew where all the tools were, meaning I didn’t have to keep stopping to ask questions, or researching the methods of doing something, which saved me a lot of time.
o I also improved my knowledge on the Apple Mac computers. My computer at home is a windows vista, so adapting to the new features and layout threw me off when initially starting my student magazine. After persevering with the Macs, I was able to gain more knowledge on them, meaning I was more confident when making my music magazine
o My final strength is learning how to use my time in the best way possible so this reflects on my final project. For my student magazine, I rushed my photography, and took the photo’s of a friend in the corridors of South Downs. I feel if I had more time I could have thought about the Mise En Scene more and this would have helped my magazine as a whole. So when it came to my music magazine, I spent a lot of time doing my photography, using different backgrounds.
WEAKNESSES
o My first weakness was positioning Coverlines onto the front cover. After my student magazine, I knew I needed to research more music magazines, and see how it was done, as this was a weak point on my student magazine. However, when it came to the Coverlines on my music magazine, I found myself spending hours changing the order and placing around, and this was really time consuming. I couldn’t decide what looked best, and needed more confidence in this area.
o Another weakness was when doing my photography; I found it hard to tell my models what to do, and what pose to pull. In my student magazine it wasn’t too important to have a perfect picture; therefore I found it easy to leave the left side third free. However on my music magazine, I found it really difficult to leave the left side third free and this is another reason that I struggled placing my Coverlines.
OPPORTUNITY
o My first opportunity was that I could use picnic, an online editing website to edit and develop my pictures. I have used the programme before to help brighten up pictures and thought it would be perfect to use as an editing method. On my front cover picture, I used the ‘reverse tint’ tool to make my models eyes blue, when they are originally brown.
o My second opportunity was that my genre was pop. My chosen genre of music is pop because it is my first choice of music to listen to. Because of this, it made it easy to know what to write on my double page spread as I know what I’d be interested in reading and tried to base the interview on that.
o My third opportunity was that I had access to the internet at all times. This gave me the ability to compare my music magazine with other real ones, to help me get ideas and make mine look as real as possible. This prevented me wasting no time worrying about how to lay my front cover out, as after looking at several real ones, I noticed a general pattern and stuck to that.
THREATS
o My first threat was that for a few lessons my login would not work on the college apple mac’s. This made me loose valuable time that I caught up on in my breaks at college.
o Another threat was after doing my Student magazine, I was still unsure of how to create a double page spread, so I used the internet to do my own research, but this also wasted time.
o A third threat was after completing my student magazine I was still unsure how to create a conventional Music Magazine as the layout is completely different and the features are very different.
