1. Evaluation Question 7
Looking back at your preliminary
task, what do you feel you have
learnt in the progression from it to
the full product?

2. Preliminary Task Outline
• My first task was to create a magazine cover and
contents page for my school. The purpose of the
magazine was to inform the pupils, staff & parents about
the things that were taking place in school in the
upcoming week. This task allowed me to learn how to
use some of the tools and work my way around Adobe
Photoshop, this benefitted me for when it came to using
this programme to make my final piece. I have made
great progress since my preliminary task and learnt
more about Photoshop in order to make sure my final
products are better than this original task.

3. Preliminary Task

4. Progression

5. School Magazine
When I started this task and began making my magazine, I had to quickly get used to
using Photoshop as I wasn’t really familiar with the way it works. I had to learn how to do
basic movements and creations in order for me to start this task. I learnt how to add
layers, use text, manipulate images and arrange the layers.
It was fairly simple developing my skills in those areas. I still had a basic understanding of
the programme and magazine conventions, therefore, looking at the magazine now I can
really see my progress in comparison to my final products. I think my magazine stuck to
the house style and appeals to the target audience of pupils, it also links with the school
logo. However, if I was to re-do the house style, I wouldn’t have a gradient background for
my contents page as I don’t think it looks very professional now that I know how to make a
professional looking magazine page. I think I used too many fonts on the front cover and
they didn’t really compliment each other. For example, the masthead font is quite fancy,
and the bottom footer font is quite basic. I think that the front cover image looks good.
However, I used the blur tool on Photoshop to fade the top of the photo out and I think I
could have paid more attention to that to make it look better. I feel like at this stage, I
didn’t have the skills to accurately blur out part of the image. I also think my contents
page is basic and doesn’t follow the conventions of a magazine. I think the images look like
they have just been pasted in and nothing has been done to them. I also think this
wouldn’t appeal to my target audience as nothing is really eye-grabbing.

6. How have I improved from my
Preliminary Task to my Final Piece?
Improving on my basic Photoshop skills have allowed me to ensure that my final product’s
are of a much higher quality, professional standard and fit the typical magazine conventions.
Building my skills over time and looking back at this work has given me the opportunity to
understand what is needed to create a magazine following the typical conventions and what
is needed in terms of content and layout. When I began using Photoshop, I could only use
basic cutting out skills like cropping, over the course I have improved my skills using other
tools such as lasso, magic wand, quick selection and magnetic lasso which helped me when it
came to cutting out images from backgrounds or trying to manipulate the image. Another
skill that I have improved over this duration is the effects you can put on text. At the
beginning, I only really knew how to use the drop shadow effect correctly and now I have
learnt how to use other effects such as stroke, bevel and emboss and inner shadow to all
improve the appearance of my work. I followed magazine conventions in my front cover by
making sure I had small details like the barcode, price, date and website which all improves
the professionalism of my magazine. I again followed the conventions of a music contents
page by using shapes in a way to cut sections in the page, I think this attracts the audience
towards the text. I also have learnt that it is important to appeal to a wider audience, in my
preliminary I just tried to attract the pupil audience, in this piece I have tried to attract rap
music fans as well as others, I’ve also tried to range it from the age of 16-25 to allow my
content to be varied.