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

 By looking back at our preliminary task (which was to create a college magazine front cover), and in the process from that to my finished music magazine front cover, there are many changes that I made when I made my magazine. 
I have developed by making my magazine look more conventional, rather than just 'poster-like'. I also made the sell lines stand out more in my music magazine because on my college magazine they fade in to the back ground and do not stand out, so if the readers were not attracted by the main cover line then there would be nothing else that would immediately attract them to my magazine.
I also decided to make my masthead bolder, I found this was a convention that all magazines used and on my college magazine I found that, although the colours do go with the rest of the magazine, it is quite a plain and boring font that does not stand out against the rest of the magazine. So when I was making my music magazine I looked up many different fonts that were bold and represented the genre that I want my music magazine to be. By doing this, and making it a different colour to the majority of the other text on the page I managed to make it stand out more and look more conventional. I figured also by doing this, if my magazine was on a stand in a store then people will be able to see this, even if they can only see part of it, as oppose to it not really standing out, which it doesn't on my college magazine. 
If I had the chance to do my college magazine again, I would put the masthead in a much bolder font that was a lot different from the others on the page (but still in keeping with a house style) and I would make the main cover line a lot bolder compared to the rest to make it stand out more. I would put the smaller cover lines in a box to separate them off from the rest of the magazine, and do the sell line that is above the masthead it a colour that stands out more against the black background. I would also try and feature at least one more picture on the front cover because this is a convention of magazines and to just have one image on there is something that is not expected of a magazine. 
It was useful to carry out this preliminary task as it gave me a bit of preparation in making a magazine and provided me background information on the codes and conventions of magazines in general. It was also useful because it meant I could look back on my college magazine to see how I have improved and it also gave me a bit of knowledge about photoshop before I made my actual music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread. 

I definitely think I have developed in my media skills, especially in photoshop, as you can see in the previous question for my evaluation there are many new things that I learnt since we started this preliminary task back in September. I have developed in making my magazine looking more conventional in order to attract my audience more.
To produce my final music magazine it took a lot of research, which involved finding popular, existing music magazines and looking at their front covers, contents page and double page spreads to see what conventions they used to make their magazine successful and attract their audience.