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

Throughout the coursework unit, I have discovered how to highten my skills using different media products such as Blogger, Photoshop and Flickr. I have learnt how to upload new posts/photos onto Blogger and Flickr through trial and error, learning as I go along. In Photoshop, I have experimented with the paint brush tool (set to different opacity's), the brightness/contrast tool, the hue/saturation tool, the lasso tool, and the free transform tool. The paint brush tool helped me colour in different areas of my magazine which I wanted changing, the different opacity settings helped me to make the image as neat as possible. The brightness/contrast and the hue/saturation tools, helped me when I was editing my original images. They helped me adjust the level of brightness of the image next to the dark background, making it not too overwhelming for the viewer. The lasso tool and the free transform tool helped me to change the size of my images, and cut pieces of images out and move them. This really helped as in some of my images, the background was not appropriate and needed to be cut out. The only tricky part to using this tool was trying to get it right all the way around the image, without having to start again.
I have thouroughly lookedat other magazines which would have the same target audience as I would (Kerrang, NME, etc.) and have chosen fonts which have the same style as these. The text font I have used for my feature article is “Helvetca” which is an easy to read font, and also looks good. I also had to plan out the way my magazine was going to fit around the page. I spent lots of time moving about different pieces of text and images, choosing different colours, and different fonts to see which would work best for my magazine (cover, contents, and double page spread). This helped me make sure/feel that the final magazine I had created was at a good enough standard/quality and was as close as I could get to the real thing. I had to make sure after I had written my feature article I proof read it. This is important in the magazine industry as any typo's could be embarrassing for the editor/writer, and the whole company.