Week 7 - Preliminary Exercise Front Cover & Blogging/Presenting

The second part of our preliminary task was to create the front cover for a school/college magazine.


The first step of action I took was to look up as many school/college magazine front covers that are already out there and identify which ones sell well and are popular and why. Also, by researching what is already out there I gained a better understanding of the importance of a specific target audience and target readership.

This particular front cover stood out to me as I feel the colour scheme used is simple yet all the colours work well together.

Next I began thinking about ideas of what to include on the front cover to make my magazine, different, recognisable but also took into consideration what are crucial and compolsary to have on the front cover of a school magazine. I found a very useful image through google on what ALL genre's of magazines must have.

• Catchy title
• One main photo
• Color scheme (suitable for school mag)
• Barcode
• Story that relates to cover photo
• Issue number
• Date
• Price
• 5 cover stories (maximum)
• Taster of next weeks magazine
• Gifts/prizes/compettitions
• Fundraisers

After this I then watched a clip on what makes a magazine successful.

The video I watched gave me many different ideas and ways in which I could really make my magazine the one to buy. I brainstormed ideas for what would make fun, catchy, yet suitable cover stories such as:

• Summer Fare
• Exam Results
• Music Club Performance
• Sporting Tournament Win
• Trips

All of which would have puns & play on words as most magazines tend to do (and it helps sell better if people are able to get a few laughs out of reading it).

I then went on to thinking of names for the magazine but before I did this I carefully considered what sort of students I wanted to read this magazine. Students who have high hopes and dreams, students wanting to excell in all aspects of their education but also students who need a chance, who need that extra push and help.

The possible names were:

• SFX NOW!
• GO - GETTER
• DASH
• SUCCESS
• DRIVEN
• THE MONDAY TIMES
• THE VIEW
• INSIDE MINDS
• THE FUTURE
• PLAN A

I decided to go with SFX NOW as I felt it was relevant, catchy and got the point across (work hard at SFX now and it will pay off).

My front cover includes various forms and conventions in which real media products are made. It includes:

• A short memorable title
• A slogan which can be linked to the title
• Full page image of what the main article is about
• Price/date/barcode
• Language techniques (inspirational language)
• Teasing comments and tasters

1.To make my magazine more succesful in following the forms and conventions of a media product I could have made the cover image more imactful and dominant (direct eye contact with the reader). I also could have made my colour scheme more identifiable and subject relevant.

2.When approaching the subject of representing particular social groups within a college I took it upon myself to ask the people at my college whether they thought 'social classes' and 'groups' were still evident in this day and age.

I feel my magazine represents diveristy which is part of the reason why I chose not to have on person on the front cover I chose people of different height, weight, culture etc. However as the college I attend is largely dominated by one race of people, showing diveristy was not as clear cut as I had aprehended.

3.I think various different media institutions would distribute my magazine, such as schools, colleges, and even off lisence because I see it as being inspirational and also this would make the magazine highly accessibe to the students who attend the college and their parents. Different people could benefit from reading it.

4. The audience for my media product would be mainly at college students from the ages of 16-19 who are aspires, who strive for the best. However it is also for the students that struggle and need the push to become set in the mind set that hard work pays off.

5. By following the  forms and conventions of a media product I feel that I will attract my audience because through the dominant cover image alone their attention will be captured (direct eye contact with the reader). I also feel I will attract my target audience through a suitable color scheme that is identifiable and subject relevant.

6. I have learnt that when using InDesign if I want the background to be the same of that in my image (created and adjusted in Photoshop) it is best to 'place' the image first.

AS Media Blog - Week 5 - Photography software introduction

Introduction to Preliminary task & Photography Software

Our task was to create the front cover and contents page for a school/college magazine. This included learning how to effectively use InDesign and Photoshop, taking our own images and uploading them onto photoshop and adjusting the images to our satisfaction. I carried out some research on current school/college magazines and on what our target audience would be interested in reading in a magazine and why to make sure our magazine reached the standards and needs of our target audience. I then carried out further research and found layouts of main photo's on magazine front covers that I thought were interesting, then saved them to give me inspiration on the layout and format of the contents page I would create for my magazine.

These are some of the front covers I looked at:

This is an image of an annotated school magazine front cover. From this image I decided to look carefully at the way they edited to picture and how this affects colour scheme. This was something for me to consider when it came to the making of my magazine.

1. My media product will abide by the forms and conventions of magazines that are already out there in the sense that it will have all that it needed on it like the diagram above, however in terms on content and design it will challenge and develop the conventions of magazines that are already on the market.

Altough I did not feel the image had any relevance to school or any of the cover stories, the background used in interesting and the photo has not been edited (or much). However the inspiration I got from this was how simple the colour scheme is yet it works very well.

The image used here was better as it is relevant however it has not being edited but the poitioning of the title and the main story are good. That is the inspiration I took from this image.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I feel my magazine represents diveristy which is part of the reason why I chose not to have one person on the front cover I chose people of different height, weight, culture etc. However as the college I attend is largely dominated by one race of people, showing diveristy was not as clear cut as I had apprehended.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?


EMAP would be the media institution to distribute my media product. I decided on EMAP as I feel since the company made the change to business-to-business magazines, my magazine will be taken seriously by members of the general public as well as the audience my magazine is intended for.



4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
College students, teachers and parents of the chosen college for my magazine

5. How did you attract/address your audience?
I did this by ensuring that the images, color, font and layout of my magazine was something that would appeal to my target audience and something they could relate to. For example using neutral colors so that it would appeal to both males and females and the layout was simple. I made sure my cover lines were easy to locate and understand through where I positioned them on the page and the color of the font I used on particular cover lines to make sure the text did not clash with the background image.
I also feel I atrracted my audience by displaying my specific social group on the front cover

Furthering my knowledge of the softwares (6)

I watched a video on youtube that gave me a better understanding of how to use photoshop and other software needed to create my magazine.



This print screen shows the first part of the video I watched about how to use a variety of adobe software’s.



The three icons underneath the woman show the different techniques the video taught me in able to learn more about the software’s and how to use them effectively

 

Although I was aware not all my images would be used I experimented a lot with different pictures and different lightings and styles of taking pictures. I did some research on camera angles and started to get to grips with some key 'angle' terms:

• Dolly shots
• Oblique/Canted angle
• Extreme close up
• The birds eye view

These are just a few of the terms I read about.
Here are some of the pictures I took.

A birdseye view of a picture I took for my contents page

A picture I took with the intention of having an article in my contents page dedicated to catering

Picture taken for contents page (The sportssection)

Motion shot

Another motion shot

I also decided to look at different font types to use for my magazine and worked out some different colour scheme's using photoshop.

I feel these colours work well together as they are unisex, mature, go well together and are not bland. I also feel that in the case of my deciding not to edit the background of my front cover image, these colours would be able to blend well with almost any background.

Research on colour schemes :

Using the website Color Scheme Designer 3 I fiddled about with various types of colour coordination such as mono, compliment, triad, tetrad, analogic and accented analogic.

This is an example of me experimenting with analogic technique

This is another example of the analogic technique but this time I have moved the postioning of the brightness button which turned my colours into pastel colours.

This is an example of the tetrad which is interesting as this method combines four different colours together sometimes from complete different sides of the colour spectrum.

This again is the analogic method which I experimented with alot as the colours that are blended are usually from the same area of the colour spectrum so my palette does not end up looking o wild or loud and I can tone the sharpness of colours down using the brightness and shadows button.



I felt that these colours were mature but interesting and all four together I quite different but I think they would still work well together.

I felt that although these colours went well together they did not have any relevance to college or school and are dull.