Research

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

2. There are 4 stages which you have to take when doing a magazine. Research, Planning, Construction and Evaluation.

3. Research For the College Magazine the only research I did was looking up other college magazines on Google. The was no research needed to make the college magazine where as I did a lot of research for my music magazine. I brought a magazine I aimed to base mine on which was Top Of The Pops and I analysed the front cover, contents page and double page spread. By analysing them I could properly dissect a professional and successful magazine in order to get an idea of what I could do with mine. I carried out a questionnaire before making my magazine in order to find out what my audience would like to see and then from the results made pie charts to show the popular answers. I also researched particular artists to see they’re background and how they got to where they are and how they dress and this helped me to base my artists on them.

4. Planning My College magazine did not take any planning as we just went out and took the photographs and put them all together where as with the music magazine I did sketches of how I would like my magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread to be structured. I also did a draft copy of the text for my Double Page Spread. This made my magazine far better than the College magazine I first made as it was neat and all fit in place. It meant I could focus on the graphics, images and fonts rather than the structure. I also did a photo schedule which contained the dates of which the photographs took place and so overall there was far more planning with the Music magazine.

5. Construction When it came to actually making the magazine they were both very different when it came to editing etc. With the College magazine I just made it where as with the music magazine I edited the images I used. I downloaded fonts from Dafont.com. I used more attractive colours and graphics like Cutting stars out of my text boxes to make it look more professional. I also took more time to construct the Music magazine to the College one. With the Double Page spread I also downloaded a brush on Photoshop to create my own background and make a colourful painted effect which improved my magazine. When it came to constructed I put more effort into making the music magazine because I had done more research and knew what the audience would want to see and tried to create it.

6. Evaluation When posting the draft of my music magazine I got feedback which then helped me to improve my magazine and even removing what didn’t work. I think that this feedback helped a lot because they could potentially be the audience so by telling me what they think it is constructive criticism. I then evaluated it myself and found that I changed certain things and built up my magazine around another one. With the College magazine I did none of this and did not get feedback. I feel that the feedback would have helped but looking at it I can see the difference the feedback makes because my music magazine is better than the college one. Here are some examples of the feedback I received.