7. Of Evaluation

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

I feel as if I've progressed hugely  from the early stages to now...

Front cover

From first glance of the front cover, you can immediately see where things have improved, dominantly on the amount of content on the page, there is much more content on my real task than the preliminary task, also on the preliminary task, there is alot of 'empty space'. I also think the use of colour on the real task is much better, as there are no 'collisions' such as the purple onto the trees in the background makes the masthead feel obstructed and doesn't have that 'thrown off the page' effect.

I have also learnt that the masthead must stand out, as well as the cover story, as this could bring in potential customers, from the preliminary task to my real task, I think that both the placement and colour of the masthead on my real task is much more suitable for the page as it's easily recognisable and doesn't obstruct the image.

For the main image, I think the real task image is better, as it's posed better, without so much background (a effect I wasn't trying to re-create). it also allows for better positioning of coverlines.

The coverlines from my preliminary task look basic and amateur, as they aren't easily readable and aren't placed well, where-as on the real task I think the use of the bold yellow colour makes the coverlines stand out, without obstructing the image in the background.

For the preliminary task, I didn't add anything at the top or bottom of the  magazine (apart from a barcode) but for the real task, I added information both at the top and bottom with a black background to make it stand out much better.

Contents page

I think again the contents page is alot more developed, for a start, there are more subsidiary images, which can be a good point for a contents page as images can interest readers more than words, my preliminary task doesn't contain the 'editors corner', also, the cover story is shown better in my real task, with the image, page number, and a little text being given to it, where as, for the preliminary, it's just a bit of text with a red outline.

In my preliminary, there is alot of empty space, but in both contents pages I have added more pages to look it more realistic. There is more of a sense of a 'grid structure' in the real task. The use of main image in the preliminary, however not bad, still has plenty of room for improvement, where as I think the image choices of the real task are much better fitting onto the page.

Double Page Article

The real article was the first article I had any experience of doing, as we didn't do any for the preliminary task/mock, I felt the article is a big mixture of the front cover and the contents page, this is due to the fact that to do the title, it needs to be structured in a way in which the masthead of the front cover would be structured. The information and subsidiary images on the right have to be structured and placed in a way in which the information and subsidiary images on the contents page will be placed.

Conclusion

From doing both the preliminary and real tasks, I can conclude that there is a huge step up in quality needed to succeed in the real attempt. Simple things like text placement needs to be thought about very thoroughly, Images need to be posed specifically, and if they're posed wrong, might not work on the page it's going on. I also have a sense of time-keeping with the pages, it's surprising how time consuming it can be to design and produce something such as the contents page.