I think the most prominent progression I have made during this course is my ability to develop my skills on all softwares that I have used to create my magazine, I feel that my ability has enhanced massively when it comes to certain softwares such as photoshop and I also feel that I understand so much more of what goes into the production of a magazine before it hits the shelves. When I began my preliminary task I had very little knowledge of how to use photoshop and what tools I would need to use to do certain things, just by looking at my preliminary compared to my final piece shows how my photoshop skills have improved drastically. I believe my final piece also shows that I understand how a professional magazine should look in comparison to my preliminary where everything is unorganised and it lacks many elements that a magazine must have.
All of the research that I have done has really helped me create my final piece, I understand what a magazine needs to have to appeal to my specific target market and encourage sales. The research of other magazines that aim for a similar market to mine allowed me to understand what my magazine would need to compete with others around it, magazines such as Vibe and XXL benefited me a lot. I learned that sticking to a certain amount of colours in my colour palette benefited the magazine as a whole as it gave it a more professional look, it makes the magazine more aesthetically pleasing for the audience member. I used a colour palette of; red, white and black for the cover of my magazine and I think it worked effectively for the genre of music I decided to target for my magazine. I realised after getting feedback from my teachers and peers that different fonts can change the magazine completely if they are not used correctly, if a font is used and it doesn't fit it can change the vibe of the magazine completely. Looking at my final magazine cover and my preliminary allowed me to look at some differences between them that makes one so much better than the other, firstly the masthead of my final piece is much more visible and attractive in comparison to my plain, black masthead on my preliminary cover. The barcode is oversized by a lot on my preliminary cover which I amended on my final magazine to give it a more professional look. My preliminary cover doesn't display a price for the magazine whereas my final cover displays the price and also gives an alternative currency price. I used a very boring two colour palette for my preliminary task however I stuck to them two colours and added a third colour which I think really added to the cover page and made it very aesthetically pleasing in comparison to the preliminary. I also toyed with the opacity on an image for my final cover to show a variety and make the image on my cover different to other magazines, I also used different effects on photo's to make them more suited fo their purpose in my magazine.
