Question 7 - Looking back at my preliminary task, what do I feel I've learnt in the progression from it?

Paige Manning's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow
http://slide.ly/view/c25f13c6bebfafc836074524a0cc70e5
Comparing my music magazine to my school magazine shows that my skills have improved throughout. This is shown by the quality of my products. When producing my school magazine I had very little knowledge of how much thought and planning goes into the creation which is why the quality is so poor. For my music magazine I researched in to real existing music products which you could buy from shops, this helped a lot. I also did some research into photography aswell as the genre and existing products. While researching into photography I learnt about the ‘Rule Of thirds’ which is about placing the subject/model in the middle of the lens so they are in focus. Creating mock-ups before my final product helped improve my skills so my product could compete against the real ones. The most important thing when producing a magazine is knowing your target audience. So I created a questionnaire which could help me do this so my magazine was suitable towards them. My school magazine was very basic and was not thought through well enough. The photos were of a less quality and included unwanted backgrounds which I could not remove at the time because of my skills. The text is very large and everything is emphasised making it messy and the structure very hard to follow. On the contents the text is far too large and only contains 4 different topics which is very bad quality and is not fit for on the shelves. The images are all different sizes and have not been edited so they look a better quality. My music magazine on the other hand is well developed and in my personal opinion can compete with existing magazine products. I have used the rule of thirds in my photography and edited the brightness and contrast slightly so it looks better quality and the subject stands out. From my research i knew which coverlines to include so it was suitable for my target audience. The important text is more emphasised and there is an organised structure to help my readers. As a whole I feel that I have progressed greatly in each mock-up and final product.