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

Since the construction of the preliminary task, there have been many points and aspects that I have personally developed up till the final production. These improvements are based around both practical sides of work, as well as theoretical in the basis of media as a whole.

When I started the preliminary task, my knowledge of media construction was very basic and was something that needed improving if I was to have any success in the real thing. I had very basic familiarity with the design of any music magazine, and so had to produce a task with no real idea of codes and conventions. To gain this knowledge, research was needed to bring me up to speed with the basic design and input of a music magazine. I did this with semiotic analysis of ‘NME’ and a brief codes and convention description of ‘Golf Monthly’.

These included aspects including mastheads, snippets/features, plug lines, exclusive reports, puff lines, bar codes and sell lines. Through incorporating these things into my main project, it added that professional awareness that you would get within a typical music magazine, however to sell these had to be related to the genre of the magazine, otherwise know one will understand the overall aim. Without these aspects, the magazine just wouldn’t sell, struggling to attract any type of consumer.

What this did was improve the main task technically, compared with preliminary task. It allowed me to understand and exploit the space given, trying to maintain a full look in the magazine signifying good content for the consumers money. This was something not done in the preliminary task, with various gaps displayed throughout.

As well as this, use of fonts and colours were also anticipated into the main task, with the preliminary task only focusing on white font with a blue background. The main task had various colour throughout displaying good organisation as well as a clear positive masthead.

As well as the construction side, the research side was improved as well. In the preliminary task the target was to create a school magazine. This boasted vast problems in the idea of design as well as content within. Questions like ‘Boy or girl?’; ‘Year group?’ and ’interests?’ were all aspects that had to be tackled with each of these having a large area to talk about. What made this easier with regards to the main task, was the construction of the imaginary entity, which provided me with a specific target audience to aim at. Furthemore I could design my magazine based on here, and add specific features that I know would hopefully make vCity a success.