AS Preliminary Magazine Task

Pre-production: We were set the task of creating a school magazine cover and contents page. We were told it had to include a mid shot of someone, a masthead and various cover lines. To start off with we looked at magazines and how they had been put together and then we were left to design our own. I came up with the idea for my magazine after thinking about how although school issues are not particularly interesting to students, other aspects might be. I thought the name would appeal to audiences in an ironic way. Because it's a school magazine, I took the idea of geeks being associated with school as inspiration however the magazine isn’t aimed at a 'geeky' demographic. Here is my final plan of my school magazine:

I chose the title as it seemed appropriate for school; however I felt it would appeal more to students. I initially planned to use a monotone colour scheme as I felt it would link into the concept of the magazine; however I found that this just made it look boring so I chose to add blue to my palette. I based my cover lines around what the magazine was about, something that concentrates mainly on other aspects of school rather than lessons. The main shot of Izzy wearing 'geek' glasses was inspired by the title. It had to be a mid shot of just one person so we were limited with what we could do.

The contents needed to be interesting and contain numerous pictures so I collected different shots of Izzy, involving her reading and other things. I labelled on the mock up the colours I planned to use, I wanted to follow the colour scheme of the front cover and make it eye catching. The contents will contain page references to articles in the magazine and where to find them as well as additional information.

 

 Production: We took photos that we had planned in our mock-ups, and then we imported them to Photoshop and began editing. We then had to cut out these photos and add it onto the base of our magazine. We then proceeded to add a masthead and cover lines according to our mock-ups. I wasn't really sure what fonts I wanted to use, but I knew that I wanted them to be bold and eye catching, also i wanted the fonts to link to the 'geek' aspect of the magazine by keeping the fonts striaght forward and not particularly edgy or interesting. We were allowed 3 different fonts, so for the title I went for a simple obvious font to make it stand out. For the cover lines, I wanted a less bold, but still easily readable font, so I chose a more subtle font, yet kept it simple. For the competition cover line, I used a slightly more interesting font because I thought this would advertise the competition better and be more eye catching to the reader. Although I had originally planned to keep the colour scheme to greys and blacks, I soon realised this would look dull and uninteresting, so instead I chose to link it to the school itself by resembling the school colours. I chose the lighter shades of blue because they matched the colour of Izzy's top, and I chose the darker shades to contrast with this. I found that a white background was the most effective as other colours made it look either too busy or drew attention away from the other aspects. During the production I found the cover shot and some of the contents page pictures were too dark so I adjusted the lighting on it. I also found that I had a lot of additional space on the cover so I had to make my cover lines bigger. Here is my magazine cover and contents page:

Post-Production: At the end of this task I had produced a cover and contents page for a school magazine. I had learnt a lot of skills on how to use Photoshop as well as what a magazine should look like. I have also found how my mock ups needed to be slightly adapted to make the magazine look better and that how although you can plan the mock-ups very carefully it is important to change things that don’t work well when on the computer. However it is very important that you include a lot of detail on your mock-ups as this both saves time and gives you a better idea of what to do. Overall i think the task went reasonably well. Considering my lack of skills and knowledge about how magazines are designed and produced, as a first attempt i think the end results were ok.