Planning

Good research into similar texts. Some research into audience, but could have used graphs in analysis of findings. Very good drafts.

17/20

Construction

Proficient use of software to construct pages. Good manipulation of images and text. The cover looks a little randon and may have been better with one or two larger images. Maybe a little too ambitious. The contents page is good but the layout of photos looks a little random.

48/60

Evaluation

Good attempt to address the seven set questions. Some critical analysis

15/20

Overall

80/100 Grade A

Now that I have completed my magazine front cover and contents page, I am going to evaluate what I did.

I believe that I did quite well at this task as I had never really use Apple Macs before and had only used Photoshop once before, therefore I was very new to the software, therefore for me to create what I did was good.
I would have liked for my final designs to look a bit more professional, yet with more time and more software, I am sure that I could eventually make it up to a professional standard.

My magazine has stuck to the conventions of magazine front covers as it has,

• A masthead containing the Title of the publication
• A Dateline containing the date of the issue
• A slogan at the bottom of the magazine
• A photograph depicting the school

My magazine sticks to more of the conventions of a school magazine rather than a music magazine, which were some of the magazines that I researched.

My magazine has also stuck to the conventions of contents pages as it has,

• A masthead
• Columns
• Photographs related to articles
• Divisions within the contents

My magazine has stuck to the conventions of the magazine front covers and contents pages as I have previously researched.

My magazine represents the students of the college as well as the staff and goveners as not only is the front cover quite wierd and possibly amusing, but it also shows the hisory of the school through the memorial reef of poppies and Sir Gallahad.

I think that my magazine would only be distributed by the school as I believe that only people from the school or related to the school would want to read the magazine.

I think the audience for my magazine is for the students and the parents, as the cover is only a bit of fun, which the students may enjoy, but also the parents and staff can enjoy. The contents page can also be targeted at both audiences as not only is it colourful for the students, but it also contains information on different areas of the school for parents.

I attracted my audience by having fairly bright colours on the front cover attracting the students, but also included important pieces of history for the parents to remember why the school is so special. Also within the contents page, there are lots of different divisions, meaning that finding articles that the audience are interested in is easy.

Whilst creating my magzine, I have increased my knowledge in Photoshop and have learnt how to use InDesign, which I used for the first time to create my contents page. I have also gained further knowledge on the layout of Apple Macs, learning some of the shortcuts keys and learning the layout which allows me to locate things more easily.

Have have had some feedback from my audeince and they said that the front covers shows the school in a good light and the contents page is really colourful and easy to use. Therefore, I think I succeded in creating a decent front cover and contents page using the coventions that I researched and created it to the liking of my target audience.

Here are my final designs for my front cover and contents page for my school magazine, The Victorian.

Front Cover

Contents Page

I have tried to follow my designs as best as I could with the software that was available to me and, although the final outcome doesn't look as professional as I would have liked, I still think I did a good job on the two pages.

After creating my front cover, I now am going to move onto my contents page. For this I shall be using InDesign. Indesign allows me to insert columns so that I can easily let my text flow in columns. I did this as when InDesign opens a new page, it asks how many columns you would like.

I then dragged text boxes out within the guidlines and inserted the contents of the magazine, changing the font as I wished along with the colour, as shown below.

I then inserted photograph boxes, which easily allows me to drag my manipulated photos into the page.

Although some of the photos are to big for the frames therefore, I fit the photo to the frame, then reset the photo so that it looked good using its previous dimensions but downsized, and then fit the border around that, as shown below.

I then added a background to the page by dragging a photo box around the page, sending it to the back so the text can be seen over the top.

To start, I need to create the front cover, I did this using Photoshop. As I want several pictures and different text, I needed to create several layers so I could easily control certain parts of the cover more easily. I did this by pressing the layers button on the layers toolbar .

To create the school on a cloud effect that I wanted, I needed to crop the photograph to get rid of the parts that I don't want. In Photoshop, it is called the magnetic lassoo.

I then drew around the photo to get the outline that I wanted and then placed it within my front cover.

I then added effects to these photos by clicking on the effects button.
This allowed me to make the photo more colourful and better looking than the original and that was the desired effect that I wanted.
To insert the writing, I pressed on the text tool and inserted the text that I wanted, changing the font using the toolbars at the top of the screen.

I could also change the colour of the text and add shadows to it, similarly to the photos.
I also wanted a background so did this by selecting a background colour and filling in the background, using a cloud effect.

I then can slowly build up the layers to try and create my final design.

Now that I understand the conventions and that I have planned what my front cover and contents page are going to contain, I need to actually start to create my pages.

As part of the project we actually had to take our own photos, the originals which are shown below.

Yet these photos don't automatically give the desired effect that I want from my front cover and contents page, therefore I am going to have to manipulate them using Photoshop. This will allow me to crop the images so that it only contains certain parts and allow me to manipulate them to give the desired effect that I need.

As I now have a good idea of the conventions for magazine front covers and contents pages, I am going to start designing my own magazine cover and contentspages.
I have firstly drawn some ideas on paper as shown below. These are my first drafts.



This showed two Halbadeer guards along side another student in CCF best dress, holding a velvet pillow, which on top is the college. This is my front cover.



My contents page show the boxes where the text will go and the photographs will go. This means that the contents can easily be divided up.




Although my design may seem a bit scruffy, it, still follows the basic conventions that I have researched. Although we have to take the photographs ourselves, therefore it would be quite unlikely that I could be able to obtain these photos. I aslo think that my first draft of my contents page also fully follows the conventions that I researched, therefore I have drawn a second draft below.

This shows the school on a cloud, with a student looking up and pointing to it in the distance. Also as a historical reference, Sir Galahad and the reef of poppies shall float on either side.



My contents page is also split into coloumns with surrounding photos which will describe articles.

These second drafts also follows the conventions of magazine front covers and contents pages, yet the photographs are also more obtainable and the layout follows more of the researched conventions, therefore I am going to use these drafts as my final designs. I shall create my front cover in Photoshop and my contents page in InDesign.

As now I have found the conventions of magazine front covers and magazine contents pages, I need to decide my target audience. I could either aim the magazine at students or their parents. The student magazine would need to be more colourful and funny than the one for the parents which would need to be more telling them what their son has done at school and how fabulous the school is. Most school magazines would be aimed at the parents therefore I will aim my school magazine at the parents also. Next I need to decide what my front cover of the magazine will contain. Their are many aspects of the school which could be placed on the front cover therefore I need to create a questionnaire which I can ask to find the most popular things that people would want on the front cover of the magazine.

1) How are you connected with the school, Victoria College?

Student  Parent  Teacher  Governor  Other (Please State)

2) Which aspect of the school do you think is the most important?

Sport  Art  Music  Academic Achievement  CCF  Appearence of College 

3) What do you think of the House system within the school?

Excellent  Good  Bad  Terrible 

4) What to you is most improtant for the school?




These are just some of the questions which I asked from my questionaire to find out what my target audience would like on the front cover of the school magazine. Question 1 is quite a good opening question which helps me know what type of person is answering the questionaire and tells me what exactly each different type of audience would want.
Question 2 is one of the major questions which helps me choose what my front cover should contain. As I asked this questionaire to 100 people, 60% of them said that the most important thing for them was the appearence of the school, therfore in my front cover I shall try and improve the appearence of the school to make it lokk more attractive.
Question 3 was more of a contents page question as this would help me lay out the contents into magazines into house sections. 80% said that the house system was excellent, therefore I shall create a whole section within the contents page for the houses, so they can write their annual reports.
Question 4 was a fairly open ended question to find what would be the most important point of the school is. This would help me to choose a 'slogan' for which the magazine could also be revolved around. An answer that came up a fair amount was the history of the college, therefore I shall try to create a slogan which shows the tremendous history the college has.

Now that I have looked at the conventions for front covers, I need to try and research conventions for magazine contents pages.


The main conventions from this contents page are...

• A masthead containing the title 'Contents'
• The date-line so that the reader knows which edition they are reading
• The contents are divided into columns, with page references
• Photographs are inserted into these columns, with a reference to which article they are related to
• Divisions within the contents, which shows the different sections of the magazine.

Although this is only one magazine, therefore I need to continue to research contents pages to make sure that I 100% follow the conventions of contents pages.

This magazine contents page is slightly different to the previous cover above, yet there are some similarities between the two. This magazine contents page includes...

• A masthead which contains the title, yet this magazine contains a photograph within the masthead
• Divisions within the magazine showing different related articles
• A main photograph which is related to a certain article
• Page numbers by every listed article

These two contents pages have given me a rough idea of the conventions that I need to follow already, yet I still think I need to continue my research and look at a couple more contents pages.

Here is another contents page. This page also follows similar conventions as the two above, yet it still has it's slight differences. Yet it still follows the basic conventions of

• Masthead
• Divisions with Sub-Headings
• Columns
• Photographs related to certain articles

This is similar to yet another magazine below, yet these magazines are not school magazines, therefore they may have a slightly different target audience which may affect the layout and style of the contents page, therefore I need to look at some school magazine contents pages.

This college magazine is more of the target audience in which my magazine is aiming at and it covers the same topic as the magazine in which I am trying to create.

The features of this magazine compared to the previous magazines in which I have looked at are as follows...

1. There is not as much text which covers the photo which gives the magazine a more calm appeal to it.
2. The photo is the only focus of attention on the front cover, therefore the target audience for the magazine is only for those who know of the college.

Yet the magazine still has similarities to the previous magazines...

1. The magazine still has a masthead which is the title which stays at the top of the page.
2. Smaller text is placed nearer the bottom of the page giving you a better knowledge of what is within the magazine.

This tells me that the target audience which I aim my magazine at will depend on the layout and the conventions which I use whilst creating the front cover.

The previous magazine has given me a general idea of the conventions for magazine front covers yet I need to look at more magazines to make sure that what I have seen before is the correct layout.

The two magazines below seem to follow the same sort of coventions as the magazine before, with the masthead and the photo, yet as I am trying to research about school magazines, their front pages may have too much on the and as they are aiming for a much different target audience as I am, I think I may need to look at some smaller, 'lower key' magazines.

These magazines attract their target audience through their big colours and huge fonts yet a school magazine is usually aimed at the parents to show how wonderful the school is, but it won't stand out as much as these two magazines below.

Before I try to design my own front cover for a school magazine, I thought I had better do some research on magazine front covers to see what the conventions are in order to make my magazine successful.

The magazine cover below has given me a start on the ideas in which front covers follow.

1. A Masthead which contains/is the Title of the magazine. This is at the top of the page.
2. A photo in medium close-up of the band in which the main article is about.
3. Just below the photo, large text briefly describing the main article.
4. Surrounding the outside of the photo, smaller text informing the reader about other articles within the magazine.

The target audience for this magazine is probably at teenagers, which a schoold magazine would be aimed at therefore this magazine is a good example to show the conventions of front covers but not at the target audience which I am looking for.