Kelly Ballard

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

The preliminary task was set for two reasons, reason one was to allow students who were not confident in using Photoshop the time to get to know their way around the soft ware in order to have a better understanding when creating their final piece. Reason two was to get us thinking of all the elements and components a professional magazine consists of for our final piece to look as professional as existing products.

As the preliminary task was almost like a 'starter activity' I didn't want to spend a long time on it when I could be thinking of ideas towards my final piece. The preliminary magazine we designed was to be a school magazine, either something for the students or something for the parents, containing news, gossip or listed achievements.
The creation of this front cover is mainly shapes and I have just put text into them, which is not very professional, I think for it in order to attract the students the cover should have been more appealing, with vibrant colours, or more pictures and catchy titles. This is a main contrast to my final piece front cover, I made sure I used vibrant colours, more than one picture, interesting fonts; these elements I believe help towards making my final cover look much better than the preliminary task.

For the preliminary task we also had to create a contents page, mine followed on from the front cover, keeping the same layout and colour scheme. My contents page lacks images, bright colours all which make it dull and unappealing. Again my final piece contents page is a huge contrast to this and it looks a lot more appealing. For the final piece contents I kept to the same colour scheme, however I added images and a print screened front page. Unlike the preliminary, the layout of the text I put into columns and kept them short so not to lose the public interest thinking there is too much to read.

The preliminary task certainly helped me towards the design of my final piece, as I knew what I would change, what I could add in order to make the final piece looking professional.

We didn't have to create a double page spread in the preliminary so when it came to the final piece, it was a bit of an experiment. I had looked at existing magazines for inspiration and from that I hand drew a plan, as to what my double page spread would consist of. For the body of the text, I kept to 10pt in font size, I didn't want to go above this as I would run out of room, however it may be a bit small and I would need to consider that when designing a magazine it needs to be a reasonable size. It was very useful having been to a concert recently and having taken a variety of photos. I feel that I used the right amount of photos and text throughout my final magazine to satisfy the target audience.

Throughout the course I feel I have progressed with the design style and creations I made. I feel I have learnt from the preliminary task as to what I could or should have done in order to make the product better, and from this I was able to use it towards my final design. I have also learnt how important it is to manage my time, and spend time planning; for example on an A3 piece of paper and have three different designs with different elements, then I could of used some from each design. I have learnt the amount of research is just as important as the designing progress, Without the research I wouldn't know what my target audience would like (the questionnaire helped me) I would know what magazines are already on the market and what they include that I possibly should (the radial analysis).

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout this project I used a variety of software's and programmes in order to complete my practical. Before this work was set I was unaware of Blogger (as a website) and I have never had a 'blog' account, therefore it was a new process I needed to get used to in order to publish all of my work. As I familiarised myself with the website, I was able to publish posts which had embedded images, or documents uploaded from Youtube and Scribd; furthermore I was able to publish a poll I had created and I received answers which helped me when creating my final piece.

Any of my designs, for instance the preliminary task and the final piece were created using Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 (64bit). Unlike Blogger, I was very familiar with this software as I have used it in other subjects. This gave me an advantage point as I would not need to spend time getting to know my way around the programme.

A new website I was introduced to was Prezi, this is basically a different version to Microsoft Powerpoint. It allows you to add your information and images to and lay them out in whatever way you want. It is the type of website that is perfect for a presentation. If I had more time, I would have spent it looking around the website and trying see how could I improve the design and the creation, to make my Prezi that bit more interesting. As I have mentioned I have used Microsoft Powerpoint for a fair bit of my work, I laid all my information onto the slides, trying to make the layout as interesting as possible. Then I had to use Scribd to upload this in order to present it within my blog.

For my preliminary task and the final piece I had to take my own photos and use this within the pieces as anything we created had to be original. I used my own Digital Camera in order to take the photos, and whilst undergoing this task I was considering the different shots and focuses I could use to enhance my product. Once I had uploaded the photos to the computer I edited some, by cropping, or auto correcting the lighting.