Evaluation: Question 7: Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Feel You Have Learnt In The Progression From It To The Full Product?

I think that the main piece of progression as far as this project is concerned is the wide variety of programs I can now use, and use to a high standard, for example below you can see both of my front covers, the preliminary task was completed on Scribus, an open source platform and the main project - the music magazine, was executed on InDesign by Adobe, this meant I could build up my knowledge on the open source platform because at the time it was free and shared many things with InDesign in what I felt was an easier format, but then moving onto the main task in the project meant I could use those skills and improve my knowledge and skill on InDesign. I thought this was a bold move as the rest of my class wouldn't entertain the idea, but I thought it's the best way I felt to progress and get the work done, you can see from both of the covers below that the music magazine (CRDNL - right) looks a lot more professional in design terms than the preliminary college magazine task (Courtyard - left). I also think that my thought process was a little more aiming towards a visually appealing magazine than one that is practical in a college with the college magazine, it shares very few key techniques a magazine needs with the music magazine and no matter how much I look at it I always feel there is something missing from the college magazine, but I feel that as I progressed through the unit and came to design my music magazine front cover all of these problems were addressed.





















Moving onto the contents pages to the left and the right you can see that although the college magazine contents I feel looks better, it again like the front cover looks like there is something missing, there are gaps and it looks unprofessional, whereas I feel my music magazine could pass off to be a real music magazine contents page that is sold in a shop. I feel that the only problem with it is the use of colour for the background, I think it's too bright, and may have needed to be dimmed down a little in photoshop, but again I feel I have progressed a considerable amount from one contents page to the next, using more techniques, codes and conventions in my music magazine contents page than in the preliminary task.

Lastly I feel that I have also progressed in using the internet, with the ability to now use sites like Blogger, Slideshare and Prezi I feel that I can now use the internet for something slightly more useful than taking photos of my dinner on instagram and moaning about my life on twitter. I can now say I would feel completely comfortable setting up my own blog on a subject of my choice, and could use it for work related tasks as well (for example I set up another blog for my AS Law class as part of a group task). I can also see now that all of these methods, particularly Blogger would be a good way in the future to connect with customers if I was to create a business. Overall I would say this whole project was a great success, and I could now say I was a lot more comfortable with technology and may consider website and magazine design in the future as a career.