PRELIMINARY TASK

SCHOOL MAGAZINE

Brief • My coursework task 1 for media studies was to create a school magazine, front cover and

contents page. I decided to use Photoshop to create my magazine because you can play with effect, photo placing and different font sizes and colours. The reason we are creating these school magazines are to give us the skills and experience needed to embark on our main task of creating a music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread. My school magazine wont be as successful quality wise as my music magazine because I am not fully aware of the software therefore I was bound to make mistakes whereas now I am more familiar and have a better understanding so I will apply that to my music magazine.

Analysis of another school magazine front cover.Title of the magazine is very masculine, not only because is it red but because it says first eleven which has connotations of a football team.

Junior addition created to appeal to the children themselves ,because they have the biggest influence on parent, so if they want to go their parents are more likely to send them.

Secondary stories, mentions the Olympics this shows the school gets involved in what's going on in society and wants to get the kids involved which makes them aware.

The fact that it is a boarding school parents will want to know their child is safe ,the mention of be safe online as a secondary story will help assure parents of their Childs safety.

Main images three boys included this will appeal to young boys, little boy reading and smiling to show he is enjoying himself.

Main image of two girls this will help appeal to girl students and parents of girls.

Front cover and contents sketch• As you can see I have used same font and style for titles to not make it to complicated and

used one theme to make the magazine more formal, as I am trying to appeal to young adults. I have also used the same logo on both pages and both in same position to enhance continuity, this will help audience recognise everything is linked together. I decided to label the main image slightly to the left because i dint want it in the centre to show it was not my main vocal point, the title I want to make just as important because it is not a well established mad so i want people to see the name.

School magazine.

Before

After

Initially I had the contents in just plain yellow because I thought that would appeal to the audience. Yellow is normally associated with femininity, my school magazine is focused on male and female so I decided to merge the black and yellow together to make it 50/50 and appeal to both genders.

This is the original image I took of a sixth form student, this is a medium close up where you can only see half the body.

From the original photo I used photo shop to cut out only the student because the green screen had no relevance. To cut out the image I used the magnetic lasso tool as it was the easy for me to use also I had to use smug tool because some of the green still was still showing through gaps in her hair.I decided not to make the image cover the title because my magazine is not well established and I want my title to appeal to the audience.

I decided to take my photo using a green screen believe by using the green screen I would get less light reflection which would of effected my image. I also asked the model to wear her student card badge so the students knew she was a sixth form student at the school their for they can relate to her and also she can be seen as a role model.

Conclusion• This preliminary task of creating a school magazine has helped me gain knowledge and also

helped me understand how to work around applications used such as photo shop. My school magazine will be better than my school magazine as I know have a better understanding of Photoshop , also I now know to take a variety of different photos to give me a choice of the best instead of being settled on one. I also know were to arrange my things on the cover and contest for example images and secondary stories, and learnt that a good page does not necessarily mean cramping it with loads of images and text. Overall this preliminary task was extremely important because i can now apply the skills learnt to my main task the music magazine.