1. Below are images of my Preliminary Task (The front cover and contents page).
I feel that the preliminary task (which was to create a college magazine) helped me to create
my music magazine; I learnt many skills from doing it. From the preliminary task I learnt the
codes and conventions of most magazines and by completing the task it gave me a better
understanding of some equipment (such as IT software) that I needed to use, as well as
giving me some basic knowledge on how to construct a magazine of my own. For example I
had an idea of a general layout for my magazine, and I could decide the way my
photographs would be laid out and where to position headlines and text. Also, by looking
back at my preliminary task when I was constructing my music magazine I was also able to
pick out things which I didn’t like or wanted to change and could therefore think of new
ways to improve my coursework piece and make it better than the preliminary task had
been. For example I felt that the contents page in the preliminary task did not have enough
information in it, and the layout of it wasn't very good compared to other college
magazines. I felt that although this is appropriate for a school magazine (because a school
magazine often doesn’t have many pages) a music magazine should be different and should
contain around 50 pages. Later on I decided I wanted my magazine to be more pages
because I wanted that to be my usp as well as having new and already established featured
in it fortnightly. So I changed the layout from the preliminary task (which had about 5 pages
of contents in one column in a medium sized font) and made sure that the contents page of
my music magazine had more pages of articles written in a small font, set out over four
columns
Furthermore, Completing the preliminary task helped me know how to develop my planning
techniques for the coursework project, and gave me an understanding of how to use

2. audience research (such as surveys, questionnaires, feedback- face book, face to face) to
establish a target audience.
In total, I think I learnt a lot in progression from my preliminary task to my full coursework
product.