From completing my preliminary to task to completing my main task, there were a lot of things that I learned in the process which helped me to create a more effective and aesthetically pleasing music magazine, that sticks to magazine conventions and relates to my chosen genre.

 

The first thing I learnt was time management. This is one of the most important parts of the course which I found out early on when constructing my preliminary magazine. This is because it takes a lot of time to construct a front cover of a magazine as well as a contents page as you need to follow the conventions of magazines so that it looks professional and worthy of being on a shop shelf. Time management was a skill I learned over time as when you’re further into year 12, you realise that there really isn’t that much time for you to complete the tasks. As well as this, it helped me plan out what I needed to do to save time, so that I had a clear idea of what I needed to complete by a certain date.

 

Another thing that I have learnt from my preliminary task to the main task is how to use a website called “Wix” that allowed me to publish all of my coursework online. This site was used from the start so we could display our preliminary tasks on to our individual websites, and by continuing to use it I realised a few things. The layout of the page needs to be neat and clear so that it can be easily read and so that it is easy to function. At the end of the course I had a full grasp of the features that are available on the website and was able to present my work in a neat and accessible fashion. Another thing I learnt from Wix was that colours matter a lot when presenting work, whether that was on Wix or on my music magazine. This is because background colours can conflict with the text colour and can make things difficult or even impossible to read sometimes. So to combat this I made the background of my website dark so that I could display bright colours onto all the pages.

 

A programme that was used throughout the process of my AS Media course was Photoshop, which is a programme that helps you edit pictures and was used to create my music magazine. From the start of my preliminary task to the end of my main task I picked up a lot of knowledge to do with the programme.

The first thing being the tools that are on the programme, the ones of note that I used being the quick selection & magic wand tools, the spot healing brush tool and “Command + T”. First of all, the quick selection & magic wand tools helped me to select parts of the image I wanted to edit out. For me, this was useful when editing the main image I was to use on the front of my music magazine, so that the background of the picture was taken out so that I could put a custom made background behind it. This is something I wasn’t familiar with or had much knowledge on when I was constructing my preliminary task, hence why the front cover for that has the background of the original picture in it. The tools also helped me realise that backgrounds are incredibly important on a front cover of a magazine, because if the original background isn’t blank, you can’t place the features of your front cover where you want to, the background will dictate this. So for my main task front cover I made sure that I could use those two tools to be able to create an effective and striking music magazine front cover.

Another tool that was used was the spot healing brush tool which helped to clear up the models face to get rid of any unwanted spots or blemishes on their face. I used this tool in both tasks to try and make the model on the front cover of each look striking and eye catching for the reader. In the main task, the picture I used for my front cover was much more of a close up shot, which meant I could use the spot healing brush tool more effectively, as I was able to see the models face more clearly. This helped me to edit the models face properly, unlike in the preliminary task, as I could see all of the spots and blemishes on the models face. This enabled me to create a more eye drawing front cover and overall I am happier with my main task piece.

The last tool that was used often was “Command + T” which is the transform tool. This was a tool that was highly frustrating at times, as you have to press the two buttons after you’ve finished resizing an image to click on other images. Sometimes you wouldn’t realise that you were still in transform mode and for confused to why you couldn’t click on anything else. The tool overall was useful as it meant you could resize images easily, but it took some getting used to and some remembering to use without struggle.

 

Another programme that was used was InDesign which I had previously never heard of before and was used to construct our double page spreads (DPS) for our music magazines. This was by far the hardest programme to use out of all the ones that we used, as we didn’t touch in during the preliminary task. As well as this, I didn’t start the construction of my DPS until later on in the school year which meant I had to learn how to use this piece of software quickly so that I didn’t lag behind. This meant that I tried to make my DPS quite simple as I wasn’t able to use a lot of the tools that the programme had available. This programme also ties in with time management, as the tasks I completed on InDesign took far longer than on Photoshop.

 

Overall, from the preliminary task to the end of the main task I learnt a lot. The most important thing I learnt was that time management is absolutely essential when completing coursework, as you can’t just leave a large proportion of the work until the end of the year.