Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product (your music magazine)?

 I have learned many things since my initial preliminary task, through my drafts until my final magazine pages. In order to assess my targets, and what to improve to make my magazine better I have used mainly audience feedback, and based my improvements around the criticisms given by the audience and maintained the features that they enjoyed. 

One of the main aspects that I improved upon was my use of colour, in the pre-lim I found myself confused as to what colours were appropriate to use, and I wasn't entirely sure which colours would even match the tone of my magazine, thus I opted for a variety which generated a mixed colour palette with a mixed audience reaction. 

The colours seemed to clash, and their positioning on the background image drew some comments because they were somewhat hard to read. Much feedback surrounded the colour of the cover line matching that of the models tie, and the two clashing together. As well as this, part of the text was noted to be positioned on top of a line of the horizon, thus making it quite difficult to read. I have also learned that the way in which text is written is also important. The style of the cover lines has an impact on their effectiveness. 

I also learned that with the colour, not to overwhelm the reader with so much on the page. My draft front cover of my music magazine had far too much happening on it, and this was one of the main aspects of criticism drawn from the test audience. They referred to the colours and the effects being used on the page as "too much" and that here was too much happening making it all look quite difficult to comprehend and read individual parts. Therefore I took this into account and I made sure to change the front cover to actually be more simplistic. 


As well as this, I received feedback from my audience surrounding the positioning of text and how heavy it looks on the page. Audience feedback said that the initial draft versions of the DPS pages were far too text heavy and this thus made them quite difficult to read and they just looked like a large block of text. thus they were less appealing as magazine articles. As well as this, they suggested that an improvement would be to break up this text in order to create more natural entry points throughout. 


With this, my use of pull quotes was commented on, to make them stand out and more obvious. I used different colours and different sizes for each of the pull quotes which made them look initially too confusing and inconsistent, therefore I rectified this by then changing the styles of these pull quotes so that they matched each other more appropriately. 


Another aspect of my music magazine that the audience commented on was the lack of page numbers initially. Without these, it did not particularly look that much like an actual magazine. therefore to actually ensure that my magazine did match the norms of an actual magazine, I used mainly Q as inspiration for the bottom border on each page, saying the page number and date of publish. This way it was more reminiscent to a real music magazine.



As well as this, I received audience feedback surrounding my original flat plans for my music magazine which then influenced me to change them. In the flat plans, there was too much happening one the page and images coming out from the sides as well as text literally all over the place. This is why I changed my final design from that of the flat plans because I receive feedback to suggest that it would be better to have more simple pages and less exaggeration and production surrounding the use of images. The audience recommendation was that the visuals would be enhanced by having less and make it more relative to regular music magazine articles. 


Overall looking all the way back from the preliminary task I feel like I have gathered more and more knowledge throughout the production of my music magazine into how to produce a good looking, genuine magazine, and not just in its presentation but also in the tone it creates. My understanding of how professional magazines are produced has been greatly expanded, and through the construction and subsequent critsicm of different draft versions I have become more and more aware of what the readers want in a magazine, and thus been able to finally bring this all together and ensure my final version incorporates the most common points provided by all those part of the audience. 


Not everyone will be made happy, some criticism was unfair and at times completely irrelevant, and therefore I have learned to use my own knowledge whilst receiving feedback to determine what I believe to actually be correct feedback and what is not, because naturally not everyone in the test audience is going to be a professional magazine critic. However audience feedback was of course integral to making the magazine as good as it possibly could be and without the help accumulated through criticism, it would have been impossible to improve. As it is, I have learned all about the different techniques originally used in the preliminary and been able to change these into being better used in the final version.