As a practise for my final A Level media coursework; a music magazine. I was asked to produce a preliminary task which was to create a school magazine front cover and contents page. To make this magazine, I carried out a survey finding out what people want in the magazine, had lessons in school about how to use photoshop in order to design the magazine cover, done research on other school magazines and by testing out different ideas had to plan what i wanted mine to look like.



I wanted my school magazine to give a bright, happy, positive approach to school and education and to achieve this I used many different devices to create this impression and mood.

1. I started with a bright based background of an image which is very colourful and bold, with two people who look happy and are enjoying themselves to represent their feeling to school. Although the people in the picture are students, the image I used may be a problem because it was not taken in a school which may be something I could improve next time when creating such task like this one.


2. To carry on this joyful feeling, I also used bright, colourful writing to stand out and look attractive to a young audience. The same colours are repeated used to create a colour co-ordinated scheme so it is all matching and everything fits in together. The fonts are bubbly, bold, clear and easy to read so the audience will not have difficulty trying to read this text. The title is written in a sort of graffiti style to appeal to a younger audience as they would be interested in them styles of writing and feel it is for them. Moreover, the actual text used in the front cover I chose carefully to make it seem fun but also educational so it would make learning and school seem enjoyable. For example: " Win 50 pounds for best poem " as writing poems may not seem very fun for some students however, if you involve a cash prize it would then appeal to them and motivate them to do something educational. For my case making them want to read the magazine in order to find out how to win the prize.


3. The layout I chose for my front cover is very simple but effective. I only used one main strong image and done my writing around it. This was so my one image could be the main attraction, then went the audience were engaged would also read around it cover. As by having too many images on one cover could confuse or baffle the audience. Also by looking at my research of other magazines i found that most of them only used one main image also with writing around it so I thought it would be the most effective style. Furthermore, from other magazine I realised that some use a bar at the top of the page to write something, so by taking that idea i too created a coloured bar at the top with something to appeal to the audience as it may be useful for them and help them out.


4. All of the things done above were done to attract my target audience, which were school students from year 7 to sixth form.

I added in a free poster of the school, to make it look more interesting and also like the audience are getting something for free which they would like so would want to get the magazine.

Also the bar code I used was chosen specifically, not to glamorise prison in anyway but to show the students that with this magazine they can be free and escape from school pressures and just see the brighter more fun side to school.

Moreover, by making the magazine free it would definitely appeal to much more people giving my magazine a larger population of readers and wider audience.

The magazine is aimed at young teenagers who are currently in education . This is why my main image is of two teenagers, who represent teenagers as happy, cheerful and always having fun. To add to this approach the colours of the magazine are very bright, bold an attractive to a younger audience. Also the fact that the information is based on school and school issues it emthepsises that it is a magazine for students. Therefore, the school institution would distribute the school magazine. Moreover, the students in the image are not English therefore represent other multi cultural backgrounds to appeal to a wider population of teenagers.

From doing the preliminary task I learnt allot more about different types of technology. Firstly I learnt how to use photoshop including adding effects, improving a picture, adding pictures, choosing best text, editing certain parts of an image etc.

Secondly, I learnt about blogger.com and how to create a blog, publish posts, layouts and all information need to know how to use blogger.

Finally, I learnt how you could improve your photoshop designs by looking following step by step tutorials on the Internet to give certain effects and different styles to your design.

Overall, I do like my final design and am pleased with what I have produced. I believe it will be appealing and attract to many teenagers. Personally if I saw this magazine in school I would pick it up read it.

Although I did want to make the colours green and blue to represent the Fortismere Colours however, then it would not have been as bright and colourful. If I was to do another task like this next time I would keep that in mind.

By using an image that I had already added effect to and improved the picture i used selected parts of it by putting them on the top and bottom of my page which started off with only a black background. By then adding the text and a border i ended up with my final product below :

In our Photoshop lessons we were taught how to cut out an image which is a close up and put it together with a longshot image. We we encouraged to try it out and put a close up picture infront of a background picture.

So I took a picture of the school and blended it into the background putting it behind I then got a close up shot of my self with school books in my hand and cut it out, then put it infront of the main image, as a result making my picture now the main image.

This was jus one example of me testing out how to put a close up mage into another lnger landscape image.

Before starting to make my final design i wanted to chose the perfect font for the cover to make the title and certian writing parts to stand out. To do this I went on a website which would allow me to download different fonts onto my Photoshop. So once I had downloaded them i started using different fonts with different images to test which one works best together.

Moreover, from my research i found that alot of magazines just had a background image base with writing around the sides. They just used one interesting close up image of someone then added text to it, this seemed to be very affective, simple and atractive. I tried to do this with one of my images and see how the different fonts work out.

I continued testing Photoshop and trying new ideas and styles of a school magazine, the image below is one of my design ideas i had for a school magazine.

I started by having a simple plain black background. Then added an image of the school background into it, by putting the opacity down it blending the image into the background, also by adding a special effect i found on Photoshop it make it look more creative and attractive.

From our photoshop lessons i learnt that we could change the style and appearance of an image by changing the brightness, colour and texture etc. To test this i took an image and tried to improve it by playing around with the adjustments. i made the picture much brighter and the colours stronger and sharper. I then made the background black and white with a charcoal affect the make it blend in, by doing this is made the main image stand out more and become more effective.



Before Photoshop



After Photoshop