Our main task is to create a music magazine, a contents page and a double interview page. To be able to make a very successful magazine, we had to do a preliminary task in which trains us and helps us how to create one. Our preliminary task was to make a school magazine aimed at sixth formers that are coming to The Douay Martyrs School. We were given this task to train ourselves and get us ready for our main task. The preliminary task was to create a front magazine cover and a contents page. We first done mock ups and then created the magazine cover on Photoshop.
My magazine and contents page follows the conventions of magazines very well. I have used a range of conventions such as brand identity, primary colours on font and scheme, I have used sans serif font which is basic and simple and this is usually put on normal everyday magazines. I have used a masthead which is big and bold and placed on the top across the page. I have taken a shot of my model at a medium close up shot and I have used a range of sell lines on my front page. You rarely see banners on magazines so I decided to be different and add a banner; this gave the magazine a good effect and looks professional with more to offer inside.
To an extent I have successfully done a symbolic link between my magazine cover page and the contents page by taking about the same sell lines, using the same font and text, colour scheme and putting in the same model but with different poses. This has successfully given me the chance to produce a brand identity and this will allow a common look for readers to enjoy and feel like it’s their friend as for it looks the same.
I have made it clear that the magazine is aimed at sixth form students by giving sell lines that relate to the their life style such as “ driving sessions”, “uni openings now available” and “NO STRESS”. This relates because at this point of time, the students will be going through the process of planning their future, being able to drive, looking for universities to go to and even starting jobs. This magazine entertains the students by having social stories such as embarrassing moments, this will keep them interested as if only including work and tips, and they could get bored and not read important information.
The front cover and the contents page will appeal to the male and female audience is by having a unisex colour such as red and yellow, by having topics for both male and females for e.g. Shopping and Fashion or Games and Sports.
The strengths of the productions that I have made are that they show all the main codes and conventions of a magazine and this is good for the audience because they are used to seeing it on other magazines and this will allow them to be familiar on how the magazine is set out. It has good interesting sell lines which will catch the audience’s attention and this is good because they can read it with excitement of wanting to know what’s inside the magazine.
The area’s that need improvement on are places such as the main sell line on the magazine cover is a bit crowded and overly red and yellow, it needs toning down and the contents page could of had a nicer structure to it to make it easier to find the page for the topic.
Overall, this assignment has taught me to keep in time and up to date in my work and make sure I don’t fall behind. It has taught me how to use Photoshop and how a magazine should look and how I can improve it. On my main task I should work harder on organizing and planning what I want the main sell lines to be and what topic they will be featuring. The techniques I used to keep track of how my work I going was successful as for I managed to hand in my work on time and also I had done more than one mock up to help me come to a final finished work. On the whole, I can say I have done well in on this task and hopefully I will do even better on the main tasks by trial and error on this preliminary task.
