Preliminary Task - School Magazine Cover and Contents.

The preliminary task was to produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. We also had to create a mock-up of the layout of the contents page.

By looking through some current magazines I got an idea of the kind of layout and colours that should be used. As a not so well known magazine using bright colours would help to make it stand out and by using pinks and blues it would appeal to both male and female.

After a lot of deliberation I came up with the name G!NEWS (a play on E!News, changing the 'E' to 'G' for Guilsborough).

The majority of original photographs on the cover are Mid-Shots of Sixth Form students which was appropriate as this is the target audience. The photographs are clear and represent the main stories. To come up with the story headlines I exaggerated on the things that were happening at school at the time and to photographs that related to them.

Overall I am pleased with how the cover turned out, however it could be improved with the photographs being controlled. for example, better lighting and to
think about the connotations of the images.

For the contents page, I carried the colour scheme throughout and again looked closely at current magazines for the layout. It was difficult to come up with so many stories but I think they are very appealing to the target audience. I included a few words from the 'editor' to give a more realistic look.

I am pleased with the final contents page, again I do think it could be improved with better images and more detail.