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

Photography:

The photographs from my first magazine weren't very well planned. The photograph along the bottom I think is quite good, but the other park photographs are blurry and badly organised. I've now learnt about shot distances, angles etc. and I think that the photographs I took for my final are a lot better than the old ones, as I knew what I wanted for my final magazine, whereas for the college magazine I just took random photos. I planned these photographs a lot better, as well as the place I took them.

Fonts:

I've learnt a lot more about fonts now too i.e.: not to use too many different fonts so that it looks messy and un co-ordinated, and using similar fonts to form some sort of house style. The use of http://www.dafont.com/ has been incredibly helpful. On my college magazine, I only used fonts that I found on PhotoShop, and they don't really suit, whereas there is a house style for font in my music magazine. I used over 7 different fonts over my three final pieces, from both PhotoShop and http://www.dafont.com/.
Some of the fonts I used: (dafont) - "Soopafresh", "Capture It", "28 Days Later" and "Chilled", and a regular Microsoft font - Trebuchet MS.  

Layout:

The layout of my college magazine cover isn't very good as the three main photographs are just square images that have been tilted slightly. I now know how to feather the edges or put a border around each picture so they don't look like they've been edited in Paint. The writing on the cover is also very unorganised and disjointed between "gig and... we talked". It doesn't look very much like the cover of a magazine, possibly more like a poster, but I have now developed the skills on how to organise and lay everything out like a real magazine.

PhotoShop: My PhotoShop skills were very basic when we started the college magazine, as I had never used the program before. That's why the college magazine looks badly constructed. The four people along the bottom have just been cut out and placed onto a black background, and I can see mistakes i.e.: where i've cut the people out from their original background, and cut a small piece of them off too. I have now learnt to use PhotoShop more effectively and gained skills by using lots of different tools in the program.

Planning:
When I was making my college magazine, I didn't properly plan it. I believe that the only real planning I had was a sketch of a possible cover layout, and asking my friends to be in a photo shoot. Now I've learnt the importance of planning my magazine properly, so I know what I'm doing each day to get my magazine completed within a certain time. I had certain days where I would either be: taking photographs, editing photos/magazine, or writing for the magazine. I also had to plan things such as the use of my equipment - making sure that there was a camera available on the day I wanted to take photographs, instead of just arriving and hoping that there would be a camera free.

Audience Research:
My audience research for the college magazine was very weak. I didn't really know what elements I should have in my magazine, therefore I didn't really know what to ask the students around me. I now know how to construct a questionnaire that has specific questions that I can gather information from so I know what people like to see. I've learnt that the more questions you have, or the more detailed the questions are, the better the end result of your magazine will be as you know a lot about the people you want to target/represent.

Overall, I think that my PhotoShop skills have improved the most. I'm now very comfortable using the program, and find it almost easy, whereas when making the College Magazine, I was very un-confident and it took me a long time to complete small tasks using some tools.
I've learnt more of how a magazine should be laid out properly, to make it look like a real magazine and so that it looks interesting to viewers.
I have learnt how to use fonts and colours appropriatly, so that nothing clashes in my work. I also learnt how to write a suitable article for my magazine.