Similar Product Research: Magazine Front Cover 1

Magazine Front Cover Research 1

Diary 1: 27/9/12

Diary 1: 27/9/12

Today I worked on finishing my contents page for my magazine, and then I added this to my half-finished Preliminary task. Once I had done this, I finished off my preliminary task and added the pictures I had taken for it, and then updated this all to my blogger. Also, I added the Labels gadget to my blog and added an 'Evaluation', 'Preliminary Task' and 'Production Log' label to my blog. After this, I started on my similiar product research for the front cover and contents page so that they would be completed for next week.

This is a print screen of my completed contents page for my preliminary magazine:

Preliminary Task: Haydon School Magazine

Our first preliminary task was to create a magazine (front cover and contents page) about Haydon School. The first step of the task was to go out and take pictures for our magazine. In order for the pictures to be effective we had to make sure they were related to Haydon. After this we had to select and reject whatever pictures we did and didn't want to use. I tried out some of the pictures on my magazine to see which one would look more professional and would appeal more to the audience.

Firstly, we went around the school and took some images to use for my magazine. We took a range of different images to make sure that we had enough of a variety to choose from. The images we took all corresponded with the purpose of the magazine. Once we'd collected the pictures, we downloaded them onto the computer ready to be used on our magazines.

Here are some examples of the photos we took:

Then, I began to create my magazine.

Magazine front cover

This is my front cover I made for my preliminary task. I decided to keep the masthead of my magazine simple so that it was easy for the reader to instantly tell what genre my magazine is about and so it's not too complex for them to read. I started off by opening two A4 International Papers for my cover and contents page, and proceeded to add the text and images that I had collected. I created my magazine cover first and decided that I wanted to use a full bleed image. I used a picture of a student in Haydon's field since my magazine would be to do with the school. I picked carefully where I wanted to put the masthead and then decided to use green as the main colour so that it matches with the main image because it has a lot of grass and green in it; Therefore all of the text on the magazine is green and has a basic house colour. I added a bubble with the text 'GCSE results gone through the roof' to make it look exploding and interesting. After adding a bit more text, I finished off the magazine with the price and website address to make it look realistic.

                                                                                Contents page

Next, I created my contents page. I used the same text style and colour scheme as my front cover so that it looks like they are from the same magazine. Again, like the front cover, I used a full bleed image of a Haydon student walking across the field to represent Haydon students. I added a sufficient number of pages (15) to the list and gave them suitable subheadings. Also I included an image at the bottom of the black box which was another picture of a student just to attract the audience a little more.