My school Magazine Front Cover Evaulation!

In this task, I had to create a front cover for a school magazine. To start off I did some research looking at examples of some school magazines to get some ideas of what conventions were on a school magazine for my work. I noticed that all the topics on the front cover were linked to that school, which meant that the target audience for the magazine is for the school children and their parents. I also notice that the magazine had a house style which means that the magazine has groups of colours which create the theme and are the same on every page. Also the main image was linked to the main cover story. Then we went on to drawing free different designs for a front cover and three for a contents page using graphic design symbols which represent the conventions of them. This helped me understand that some elements are the same on each page (front cover and contents page) for example on front covers ‘Master heads’ are always on top left of a page so that when the magazine is on the shop shelves each magazine title can be seen for the public to see. But some things are laid out differently on different magazines. This research helped me have ideas for my design; I just needed to pick what stories I was going to put on the front cover.

 
When I was ready to start, I went and off and took some pictures to go on my front cover which would link to the target audience 'children who go to my school and there parents'.  Because I knew I wanted to put a picture of me and my two friends on top of another picture I needed to think about shots and camera angles when taking the picture. For my image I took a medium shot so that you could see us from the waist up. When I had a good picture, I then moved on to finding a good background picture in which I could edit us on. I decided on a picture of the ‘Disney Land’ castle to use as my background, so I went on Google pictures and got a nice suitable picture in which I could edit us on.  

 
Then I started my work on the program 'Photo shop', at first it was hard because of all the tools and options on the program but after some practice I got the hand of it. I started by adding a master head which I called 'school life' this was the name of my school magazine. I did this by using the 'text' option, which when selected lets you add text anywhere on the page. Then I knew I wanted a big main image which would be the background of the entire page. So I had to add an image which was related to the main cover story, which was 'Armthorpe students win a trip to Disneyland'. Because we actually couldn’t get a picture of me and my friends at Disneyland I had to edit us in a picture. So I went on Google images and got a picture of the Disney Castle, which I would use to edit us into the picture so it will look like we were there, standing in front of the castle. So to do this I uploaded a picture of me and two of my friends and used a tool called 'the magic wand' to cut around us and delete the background so I could upload it in front of my Disney background. When uploaded, I made sure each 'layer' was in place so the background layer was at the bottom of the list so every other layer are placed and show up on top of the image. Then I worked on adding plugs onto the page to make my magazine to make it look more professional. After adding my main conventions (Master head, Main image and cover stories) I then made sure I had a house style which would be the same on my contents page as well. And because on my main image there are a lot of blue shades, I decided to make my house style the colour blue and black for the text so it would be bold and stand out.

 

In this task I have learnt how to use the program ‘Photo Shop’ and have also learnt about the conventions of any magazine and for a school magazine. Altogether, I am happy with the results and think I met my own target which was to make this look as professional as I could.