Progression From Preliminary Task

My construction skills have developed quite a lot throughout the process of creating my magazine, when making my Preliminary magazine I struggled to create a good, neat structure for the front cover and contents page. This was due to a lack of knowledge on music magazines, which I've now gained through the different deconstructions of magazines. I also had a lack of experience in InDesign, so didn't use margins to allign everything neatly, unlike in my final copies of music magazine pages, when I knew techniques in Indesign that allowed me to create a neater structure. When creating my preliminary magazine pages, I also had a lack of experience on Photoshop, and couldn't change the background, to a colour of my preference; unlike when I was creating the pages for my music magazine when I knew how to change the background colour, which created a more professional image that was easy to create a colour scheme with. The Preliminary task did allow me to become more familiar with Photoshop tools, such as the anti-blemish tool, the burn and dodge tools, as well as the colour tools. This meant I found it easier to edit my images for my music magazine in Photoshop, and my Photoshop skills simply developed even further.

My ability to deconstruct music magazines has also developed a lot, I now know typical conventions of music magazines that feature on the front cover, double page spread and contents page. By recognising these conventions I was able to use them in my magazine pages to make them look more professional and realistic. At first it was difficult to deconstruct music magazine pages, because I was unaware of how different features such as colour scheme, image and font were all combined to create a specific style. However my ability to deconstruct became better and better, and I'm now more confident on how to identify the different features and explain their uses. due to deconstructing a number of different music magazine pages from NME, Q etc, I found it easier to deconstruct my final magazine pages on my blog. Showing how my skills had definitely developed over time.

My ability to analyse has also developed, when analysing my preliminary magazine page, I lacked the ability to give full explanations after reasoning and making statements. However, I now feel more confident when analysing my work, as I'm more aware of literary techniques in relation to media analysis, and what specific features should be analysed. Since I now know more about music magazines and their conventions, I'm also more aware of non conventional features which can be talked about during analysis. I've also become more fluent when analysing, and my analytical speech uses words such as juxtaposition, masthead, representation and symbolism. Making my analysis sound alot more professional and intellectual.