To help us produce our preliminary task, the school held a ‘media photography day’, where a photographer visited and gave us a presentation about how to set out a good magazine cover and how to take good, strong photos. We took on board all the information and his feedback that he gave each of us on our own pictures. We then spent the day taking some medium shot photos and designing our front cover of a school magazine. I decided to base my magazine around 6form instead of just one specific subject. This gave me a wider range of things I could include in the magazine, rather than limiting it down to one subject. Also, because in the school there is a wide range of ages, it would be hard to get the magazine to appeal to everyone. I wanted my magazine to be aimed at 6formers as this is the hardest time at school. I wanted it to be useful and helpful for giving advice to 6formers on how to deal with stress and exams etc.
I think the image that I took for my school magazine is very strong and eye catching. In the image, there is a stack of school books and a 6form student leaning on top of them. The image emphasises how much stress and pressure 6formers are under and the masses amount of work. The 6form student looks very upset, which connotes that she is under stress, so the image helps to show the reader that this magazine would be useful in helping 6formers to deal with stress. Furthermore, the eye contact helps to draw readers in more and it automatically persuades people to have a look at the magazine. The student is positioned on the right hand side, with space above and to the left of her. This meant that I had space to put the title and cover lines without covering up any of the image. However, the space to the left of the image is a bit dark, so next time I would prefer to have white ‘space’ so my cover lines stand out more.
On my magazine cover, I have included three cover lines. Two of which are providing readers with help and tips and the other which is providing readers with a chance to win an ipad. The cover lines help to encourage people to read the magazine and by winning an ipad it could help to attract the majority of the 6formers more. My cover lines are in red and white, the red matches the heart in the title, and the white matches the ripped piece of paper and the students’ shirt. My first cover line is presented under the title, it is a rhetorical question, which I think helps draw readers in more and makes them want to read on. The second cover line is presented underneath in a star. This makes it stand out and could connote that by reading the tips, you could become a ‘star’ student. My final cover line is presented in a red text box at the bottom of the cover. I think that the position of it makes the cover look more organised, and makes it stands out more, which helps to attract more people into entering the competition. I think that my cover lines do stand out, but to make it more interesting I could have made each cover line a different colour, possibly to match the different colours of the books.
The title is positioned in the top left, this means that when magazines are stacked on the shelf, the title can still be easily seen. I wanted my title to be original, therefore I aimed to design it like the ‘I love new York’ logo. I have presented the title on a ripped piece of writing paper; this makes it fit more with the school theme of the magazine and makes it appeal more to the target audience. I included a caption underneath the title so readers automatically know what ‘S F’ means. However, I think that next time the caption could be improved slightly, maybe I could add a bit of humour to it so it appeals to the target audience more. I also think that I should make the caption slightly bigger next time, so readers straight away know that it is ‘free’ and for ‘6formers’.
Overall, I am proud with my school magazine cover. By creating it, it has enables me to learn lots of new skills on photoshop, taught me how to take strong, eye catching front cover photos and how to organise a magazine front cover, which will all be helpful when I come to creating my music magazine.