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

Throughout my experience in reading music magazines, I have never really carefully thought about the particulars of the music magazines, regarding convention layouts and fonts. However, when it came to producing an actual products, the gradual progress of production gave me strict discipline as I made my final product (the music magazine).

Looking back the my preliminary product and the final front cover of my music magazine, I can notice that I have learnt a lot between how I approached the production of the magazine and how not to. 

One big mistake that I realised through the progress of the two products is that I did not add any article titles to the front cover of the preliminary magazine. Looking back, I knew that I certainly had to do this in my main task as this made it much more detailed and desirable to read. 

I have learnt that I should have used the image on the front cover to cover the entire page, as I hadn't done in the preliminary task - but the final music magazine product. I feel that this would look more professionally done if I was to cover the whole page like I have done in my final product, instead of leaving it white (as the default background colour) as I have done in my preliminary task.

I have realised the importance of house style/theme in my final magazine production too. I felt that the text had to have the same font and colour all the way through (more or less), so I strictly set this convention in my final product. 

Looking at my preliminary front cover as compared to my final product's, I feel that it is less attractive without any real content such as promotions, or appealing titles that drive the reader to open the magazine. In my final magazine, I have achieved this better as compared to the preliminary task due to including such promotion techniques as a 3D sticker, layered boxes, text with shadows that add emphasis, strands with opposing text colours, etc. 

Despite what I feel I have done better/learnt from the progression from the preliminary task to the final product, I have adopted and developed some of the features of my preliminary task in my final product. One example of the developed convention is the dot (.) used in the logo of my preliminary task. I really liked the idea of having a theme of this kind in the preliminary task also in the final product. Referencing how I felt it was best to have a formal house style set and how vital it is as a whole product overview, I can comment on the use of a dot at the end of the logo and say I felt the house style was carried over in the final product.