When I look back to my original Preliminary Task of the school magazine I noticed a number of things that I most definitely should have changed. I think that it is evident and fairly conclusive that I have made a lot of progress in terms of my technological advancements in Photoshop. Not only have I improved through the use of the software but also my shot compositions and the planning that I put into this task beforehand. There was a lot more consideration and I feel I was far more precise and creative in my approach. Although admittedly I am not very good with technology, I believe I made the best of what I have to create a final product which I can feel proud of.
The name of the preliminary task ‘Wilmowatch’ is not exactly well thought out. Although it has some sort of relation to the school and is a slight pun, there was not a lot of research that went into it. On the other hand, with my coursework music magazine piece I looked up many music associated words and tried to put them into a magazine environment where suitable. ‘XLR’’ can be linked to ‘Q’ and ‘NME’ showing a definite improvement in my pre-planning and way of thinking to achieve better results. The font of the title is also in an uniconic style – but comparing this to ‘XLR’ which has dominance and presence as well as a theme which follows a trend. More of a logo and branding than a name of a magazine. The size of the font is not right – it should be much bigger and more of a statement in ‘Wilmowatch’. Websites such as ‘DAFont’ allowed me to have far more characteristic font styles throughout as opposed to the dull default ones – thinking outside the box. The images themselves are all only desaturated in the Pre-Lim. As mentioned, my Photoshop abilities are limited to an extent but this is far too common and I perhaps saw it as a quick fix of an image manipulation. My images on the music magazines show an obvious improvement in my skills with the spot healing tool, brightness and contrast levels, cutting/cropping and extra additions such as drop and inner shadows, suggesting my confidence improved as well as my ability to experiment further. The models in both are well suited to their target audiences but I selected the ‘XLR’ one far more carefully. (The focus on target audience was a massive advantage in In terms of the amount of photos I took, for the coursework I took several hundred more. I knew what I was looking for and my shot composition for much more specific as I actually researched existing examples and tried to relate his poses to these. I could get a cleaner image and not settle for average as I had a much wider selection of themes as well as costumes.
When I look at the contents pages my appreciation of the rectangle tool and multiple text boxes assisted me much more second time round. By using individual text boxes I could make minor adjustments which I learnt from experience. The layout on both the front and contents is much busier but at the same time far more structured. The amount of space on the pre-lim is shocking indicating my understanding of positioning is far stronger in the music magazine. I think by looking at the significance of column formats it assisted me into making a much clearer and realistic contents page which could fit right into the band of current alternative music magazines.
I think the advantage of doing more research allowed me to have a much clearer direction in which I wanted to head in. It also gave me an idea of what I could relate my magazine to. My organisation in terms of presentation and time management has also made a significant development as I noted the necessity of working quickly along with efficiently. Each lesson I knew what I had to do and the motivation I had to do it was far superior as a result. By repeatedly using Photoshop I got to understand it much better although not expertly I must add.
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