Prelim Task; Evaluation Of Preliminary Task

Evaluation; Preliminary Task,

First things first, we were given a brief to make a front cover and contents page of a school magazine. I started by doing my own primary research into a school magazine therefore, I got my hands on copies of my school’s magazines and analysed them to see if I would want to use any of those ideas for my magazine. My school magazines have a unique house style consisting of one main photograph across the whole page, masthead at the top and a plug at the bottom of the page making this house style very basic and minimalistic. The contents page for in my school’s magazine is also minimalistic and basic because there are only ever about four bullet points of information hidden away in small font, as it is only a small magazine. After this I started to plan the layouts for my front cover and contents page.

To correctly plan the layout for these I had to learn the correct graphic design symbols for pictures and text etc. So I started a development process and created three sketches of a front cover and three sketches of contents pages. The first one was quite dull however, the other two to follow were improvements of one another. The only I took from my research was the use of one photograph on the front cover as a dominant image that summarises the magazine.

After this development process I went and took pictures with a group of classmates around the school site. Using the rule of thirds we took pictures of literally anything around school. I would then select a photo which I thought would suit my magazine best. Then I chose my favourite layout of front cover and contents page and started to create them in Photoshop CS6. I started by putting my masthead on, then strapline and then cover lines etc. After I’d put all my text on in the layout that I wanted, I imported in the picture I was going to use. I only had to make small amendments to my text to make sure it was in proportion to the picture and that I could read the text clearly.

I kept with a light blue and black colour scheme because these are the main colours of the school with our value posters around school, the website and with uniform. Also I believe they contrast perfectly and give a lovely effect to the target audience and looks appropriate to the magazine, its contents and is sophisticated.

Next time, for improvement, I would have had an idea of a picture in my head so I was better prepared for my layout when it came to Photoshop.