Evaluation Of Preliminary Media Task

For my Media Studies AS level preliminary task i was asked to create a school magazine front cover and contents page. In order to do this i had to learn how to use photoshop and other programmes/websites, such as blogger to keep an online record of my progress in the task so far, to create a high quality finished product.

Before starting on the front cover i had to do research on all magazines as a whole to look at the codes and conventions of magazines and then look in more detail at other school magazines to see if they typically conform to these codes and conventions and if not how they subvert them. Looking at all magazines i found typical features were bright colours, bold images on the cover, bold title etc. However i also found out that these features differed depending on the target audience of the magazine. This was reflected when i did research on school magazines alone. I looked at four different school magazines from different schools. The first one had a bright, purple background with the title in a very bold sans serif typeface.The title f the magazine was "Evolve" which is very futuristic. In addition the cover also featured some distorted images of buildings from around the school as well as logos of TV shows and books among two smiling students in the centre of the cover. This features made it clear that the magazine was aimed at teenage students rather than parents because of its bold features and apparent content it was clear to see that the purpose if the magazine was to entertain and interest. A different school magazine cover that i looked at was the opposite of this cover as it had a very simple layout with smiling students sitting under a tree which appeared to the be on the school field. The title of this magazine was very simple and printed in a serif font. This magazine seemed to be more likely to appeal to parents this time as it didn't have all the very bold features of the other magazine and seemed to be more about informing about the school and having a more academic and achievement focus unlike 'Evolve'. 'McDonogh' also used more sober colours and had a more realistic feel of a good school atmosphere.

I wanted my own magazine to be aimed at students rather than parents and so used most of the conventions like the ones "Evolve" had stuck to and made my magazine cover more creative focused but also made it appealing to parents as well with tag lines about content included. My magazine had a yellow background i did this because i wanted my cover to be bold and be able to attract attention easily but still wanted it to blend well with the colours I would be using on the cover. Another focus point of a front cover magazine is the main image. Because wanted my magazine to reflect a happy and positive image of the school to do this for my main image i took a picture of students sitting in the school grounds all looking happy and cheerful with some of them holding school folders to show the academic side of the school. I then took photos of different places and buildings around the school to use on the background.

After taking all the photos i had to select the best ones for the front cover and use photoshop to edit them appropriately for use on the front cover. The first thing i did in photoshop was edit my main image. I used a layer mask to edit crop my photo effectively so i would just have an image of the students sitting but without the background of the original photo. The next thing i did was crop out different parts of buildings from the other photos i took. After cropping them i used the transform tool to scale the images and distort them for really creative look on my front cover. i placed the distorted images behind the main image of the smiling students and placed at different angles to help create the look.

I think my magazine front cover represents different social groups in a good light. I think my front magazine cover also represents quite a wide range of social groups because the people on my main image are all of different races/genders/backgrounds but are all together for this image and are all happy at the school.

The target audience of my magazine is students of Fortismere Sixth Form but the magazine may also appeal to other students of the school not in the Sixth Form because of all the content from different subjects around the school that may appeal to them.

If i had the chance to do this magazine again the things i would do differently is take a lot more photos of places around the school so that i had much more options and so that my front cover was completely covered with very little empty background space as well as not spending so much time in photoshop but that would be easier as i now understand how to use photoshop effectively and efficiently.

Final Cover

adding graphics

After choosing my front cover images and background colours i had to add shapes and other graphics where i can write the taglines for my articles. Firstly i already knew that one of my cover stories was going to be about exams so i thought it would be a good idea to include an exam paper on my cover with the text over it :

But after doing this i realised that the audience may not be able to recognise that it was an exam paper straight away so for this reason i added an OCR logo on it as well because people would then be able to recognise what it is :


Other graphics i used was a jagged-edged shape using the the shape tool in photoshop and an a post it note i edited and added a handwriting font to for effect as well as a bar code and a blue stripe in the corner that matches the title.

Adding Text

I chose light blue text for the title of my cover because that is the colour associated with the the school and the it doesn't clash with the background colour too much.



This is the first version i put as my title but i thought it looked too plain and so i added an "outer glow to it:

After adding the outer glow i didn't think it added very much to the cover so i decided to add a shadow to the text as well to give it a 3-D effect.

Front cover

With only one close up image on my front cover so far i thought it look at little bare and needed more photos on it before putting any text on it. So i chose to crop certain parts of my long shot images and use photoshop to rotate an distort them a bit before putting them on my front cover.

To make the images fit properly i had to experiment with the positioning of the buildings several times and keep rescaling them but had to make sure i was careful and made sure i didn't make one picture overshadow the others.

Front Cover- Layout

After choosing my photo i thought about how i was going to make my layout for my cover. Firstly i had to crop my main image in photoshop and scale it down in photoshop so that i had it the right size for my A4 cover without changing the proportions of the image or distorting it. Secondly i had to chose i good background colour. One that was eye-catching yet didn't take too much away from the main image in my cover. i tried a few different colours including red, blue and green, i tried these colours first because they were nice and bright but later thought that they wouldn't go well with the colour of my title which i already knew was going to be light blue. I eventually settled for a yellow because it is usually seen as a "happy" colour and reflects the overall tone of my front cover: 

The Front Cover- Choosing The Right Image

Before actually creating my magazine front cover i had to chose the right image. To do this I 

took a number of long shots of places around the school like these images:

   

i thought that these were good images to use and i originally planned to use these photos as the main focus on my front cover however i then thought it would be good to incorporate a close up image as well and so i chose to also use this photo on the front cover: