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

Whilst looking at the preliminary task, I had felt that I had learnt a lot in terms of the convention of a music magazine. The main magazine that I had looked at throughout the whole project was Q magazine. I had chosen this one as this is one of Britain's leading magazines.
The colours that they had used throughout the whole of the magazine reflects their specific target audience, the colours are neutral to both genders, red black and white. However at times they could be considered bias towards the male sex. This was because they had advertised certain manly things such as cars, also another more specific example is that they had advertised Braun, “Shave free weekend. Pain free Monday” with an insert of their quote. New razor for men, designed to “make a difference”. This wouldn't appeal to woman, but on the other hand it could as a gift as it was published during the Christmas period.
Music magazines on the market all vary from genre to genre; they have specific colours for specific groups of people. For example Smash Hits, this magazine was directed to young females. As they have images on the front cover of males that they would consider "hot" from famous and popular movies. The colours and fonts that they use are all very girly and bubbly. They would use colours that are pastel colours with a black outline around fonts as this would make them more eyes catching and bold and contrast against the rest of the page.
An example that I had picked up on whilst analysing music magazines are that the younger the target audience/reader the more packed and cramped the front cover and articles would be, they would have teen pop stars that the younger generation would appeal and or thrive to be like. However when it comes to dealing with magazines for older generation the pages and layout becomes much more sophisticated. The colours that are used become minimal, and the images and photos become a lot more professional.
Photo shoots would be different from genre to genre, and depending on the age group. An urban magazine photo shoot could consider of a specific image and look that an audience is used to seeing as a background or part of the set, as a new up and coming artist could have a photo shoot at south bank in the tunnel with the graffiti background. Where as a jazz magazine style would have a specific lighting and image edit, the texture of the image would be edited in a dull types of colours and wouldn't be as bright and high impact as a musical theatre magazines images would have.
The article in magazines contain different aspects, as young music magazines have interviews with celebrities and the latest craze "teen hotties" as at the moment of the release of New Moon - Twilight Saga, on every front cover there are the stars of the film Taylor Lautener and Robert Pattinson, even though they do not relate to music they know that by putting specific kinds of people on covers of magazines they will automatically draw in the readers. Whereas on more sophisticated magazines for the older generation they may have paid commiserations towards the King of Pop Michael Jackson, as he was respected by all genres of music as he was to have influenced them all in some kind of way.