Prelimary task

i have to have done some prelimniary work for the course. for my priliminary task i am creating a magazine for school, to get a basic knowledge and skill at making and producing a front cover and contents page. i have to have make a front cover and a contents page. firstly i will do research such as a questionaire to see what pupils want in a school magazine.

Questionnaire
I am a 6th form student from Sheldon School and am making a student magazine. Thank you for filling this form out and it is greatly appreciated.

Year: 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Gender: Male Female

How often do you read magazines?
Often sometimes rarely never

What subjects do u want from a magazine?
Music film school sports Games school news
Other:


How much would you be willing to pay for a school magazine?


What types of articles would you want in the magazine?

Reviews interviews features rants comedy
Other:


Do you think there would be a need for a school magazine?
Yes no

Would you want the colours of the school to be the main colours of the magazine?

Yes No something new

Anything else you would want from the magazine?

this is my questionaire that i gave out to ten students from my year. i think given more time i would have given out more and to other years to actualy find out what people want, but as this is just a preliminary task i just took a small sample. my results showed that pupils would want a magazine and that most would be willing to pay a small sum of money for it. however most pupils didnt want thae magazine to be mainly about school and to have other articles and features mostly on film and music. most people thought that using the school colours would be a good idea for the magazine so i will use the school colours to keep cohesion between the front and contents page.

then i needed to start on the front cover. firstly i drew some sketches of the front cover. i had to meet certain criteria from the exam board. this was to include a medium close up picture and to do a school magazine. i have done a school magazine and so i sketched my front cover with a medium close up bust of a student. i set out the whole page with headers and titles. this helped me picture the end product as i could see what looks good where. for my front cover i decided to use sheldons recent GCSE results as a focus as the main article in my magazine. in my sketch i drew a year 12 student smiling with sheldon success written underneath. at the head of the page i put the magazines title 'sheldon news'. i then went into the common room to find a student. i took some pictures for my page.

these are my original pictures. i took a few pictures so i had more to choose from. i decided i liked the lighting and the compostion in my first pictures of sam. i feel he is well centered and the light on his face is pretty good. i feel the shot is well framed and composed and it is in focus. i dont really like the the background noise because if i use it completely and bleed it on my front page then some of the titles and articles will be hard to read. if i had more time i would have taken some more pictures with a clearer back ground but as i dont i think i will do some editing on photoshop.

i uploaded my chosen image onto photoshop and decided to cut out the background as there was too much going on and would be hard to distinguish any headers or taglines. instead i made the background coherant with the rest of the magazine by using the school colours. this came out pretty well but i dont think i will use it on my magazine.

after finishing off my front cover i proceeded onto my contents. i used the same font and colour scheme to aid cohesion and also put the mast head in an oval like the front cover. i drew out all the sub headers and boxers and in the end the contents page was relitivley easy to do. i feel however again i did not have enough time so ended up rushing it a bit, somehting i will try not to do on my actual project.

i feel this preliminary task was important as i got the basic idea and feel of what it takes to make a magazine. i also aquired some new knowledge of photoshop and how to use it to get the effect i wanted.

this is my final front cover. it ended up reasonably but i dont think it has a very high quality and looks unprofessional which i will try to avoid in my magazine like the blue back ground.