For the preliminary task we were put into pairs to work rather than it being an individual project, as well as this we only had to produce the front cover and contents page. This greatly reduced the workload as we had less work to do with 2 people doing that. I feel that less research and planning was necessary for my preliminary task as there was no double page spread to create so we did not need to find out what type of article would feature in a college magazine. The subject of the magazine also meant that we did not have to research so much, we were targetting people our own age, who were college students like ourselves. We already knew a lot about what we needed to include and who we needed to design for. I think that preparation the 'Grades N Babes' magazine was minimal and we designed the front cover as we made it, the coverlines were off the top of our heads. For my classical music magazine I thought about every aspect of the production in great detail, just creating random work was not enough for a more sophisticated magazine. So I have learnt that preparation and planning is a very useful thing to do, I believe my front cover and contents page would not look nearly as good as they do without sufficient research. Also, when editing photos and playing about with different colour schemes to see which worked the best, I feel I had more freedom in my final project as I was working to what I felt was good rather than trying to accomodate for two peoples ideas and thoughts. The timeframe to complete the preliminary task was much shorter as well so there was not much time for editing pictures.
Creating a detailed time plan and organising the time spent working in this project is something I have learnt to do from my experience with the preliminary task where I ended up trying to complete the contents page in the last few hours of my deadline. I found that creating a time plan for my work and trying to stick to it closely gave me a much better idea of where I should be in terms of work progression.
When taking the photos for my college magazine I did not take a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to have and how I wanted the model to be looking. It was simply a case of walking round college with a camera and hoping to find the right person with the right pose. Luckily for me I think that the main image has come out very positively and looks very good, but to try and work by this philosophy for my main project would be foolish. I took a lot of time deciding where I wanted to take the photos, who I wanted to take a photo of and when I should do this to have the right level of natural light. I definately think this has paid off as my main sell looks very fresh and natural, exactly the connotations I was looking for.
In terms of familiarity with programs I think I have improved dramatically using Quark and Photoshop especially. I was very reluctant to use Quark in the preliminary task because I was not able to do any good work on it simply because I didn't know how to use it. Through practice and regular use I like to think that I can use Quark quite well. When using Photoshop for my college magazine I would often get confused by the layers and how to use them to my advantage, i have now become accustomed to photoshop and think in the future I will be able to create some more good work from this experience.
In my preliminary task I did not take a lot of consideration into my target audience research. Once again, this did not matter too much as I was a member of my own target audience so I knew exactly what should be on the front cover and how to attract the right audience. For my main project I was quite close to, but was not in the target audience I was aiming at. Had I been more of a classical music fan I would have been in the area again, but because I wasn't, I had to do a lot of research into what classical music fans want to see in a magazine and what would make them buy a magazine. I continually referred to my research when creating the work, had I not created such a detailed profile, I would not have been able to focus my magazine to the specific area of society. When choosing fonts, colours, images and layouts I was looking back to examples of popular magazines all the time, taking ideas and checking that I was still working within the genre. Considering all the areas of my target audience was a big help for me throughout the process.
No comments:
Post a Comment