My school magazine-Little Issue

Preliminary task.

I was set a task to design and create my own front cover and contents page of a school magazine.

This involved researching and analysing examples of other school magazines like 'primary times', taking photographs of my own to include in my magazine and create head lines and titles to go onto the front cover and contents page that relate to school life.

'Primary times': The title is bold and colourful and draws in the attention of the reader. The three main colours are from the pastel cololur pallete (yellow blue and pink) which links in with the young child like feel to the magazine. The front cover has images of young children which links in to the idea that the magazine is aimed at primary school children and their parents. The cover reviews some of the material inside.

I approached this tasks by firstly creating some ideas and sketchs of what my magazine could look like. I created four ideas, looking closely at the layout and composition of the magazines front cover. I took ideas from each design and combined them to create the front cover.

The final outcome of my magazine is a result of my draft sketches. However i did make alot of changes. I decided to keep the colour scheme of the drafts (red and black) but i felt my designs were to empty and needed more detail. I felt that my ideas didnt relate enough to the school and its theme so i wanted to add more to my final design. I added a picture of the sixth form block to tie in the themes of the school and the school magazine idea. I moved the title "Little Issue" down to the centre of the page, and had the picture of the sixth form block at the bottom of the page. I had the headlines coming out of the roof on a slant to give the effect of an 'explosion of information'. The magazine front cover didnt actually turn out the way i expected it to and i felt i wasn't actually very successful.

Using photoshop enabled me to extend my creativeness and ideas as it allowed me to do things that certain other programmes may not have been able to. Such as edit the actual photgraphs and create different effects and styles with them and layer text onto photos or layer text so it over laps with images or other text . I had experience of using photoshop before i started this task which made it slightly easier for me. However, having to remind and refresh my memory of how to work with photoshop, took a little longer which slowed the proccess of actually making the magazine, down. I did at first feel very limited to what i could and couldn't do with my work and felt that very minor things like, not being able to find a suitable font obstructed my creative control.

My magazine specifically represents school life as it links with school through the pictures and headlines and inside material. It is specifically aimed at sixth formers and events that involves them 'sixth form events', 'exam stress', 'interveiws with new sixth formers and how they are finding school'.

Looking back at my magazine and at the proccess of making and designing it i would change quite abit. Firstly i would research other magazines more to give myslef a better idea of what really makes a school magazine, secondly i would add alot more deatil to the front page and really fill out the page with more pictures and bolder writting. I would have made the page alot brighter and lightened the picture and text to make the magazine more eye catching.