My Preliminary Task - Final Products

Front Cover

Contents Page

Preliminary Task Evaluation

For my preliminary coursework I had to construct a front page and contents page of a school magazine.

To begin my planning I brainstormed a number of catchy titles that I could use for the magazine. I also brainstorm along with titles; photo ideas, articles and story titles and layout ideas for the front page and contents page. When I began sketching layout ideas for the front page and contents page of my Preliminary coursework, I did some research by buying some celebrity gossip and fashion magazines and taking a look at the layout of each if them. Once I had done this I was able to use the layouts as ideas for my own magazine and came up with four different sketches, two for the front page and two for the contents page. Both front page sketches had different magazine titles: ‘Goffs Today’ and ‘Hot Goffsip’. (Both required a title relating to Goffs School) They also had article and story titles; however these were the same on each sketch. Eventually I chose to use the magazine title ‘Hot Goffisip’ along with the layout and the story titles that went with it.

Once I had chosen my magazine title, layout and titles for my articles and stories, I was able to plan what type of photos I was going to include within my pages that would relate to the articles. When I had decided on my select photographs, I was able to go out around Goffs grounds and take them using a Samsung model. For my photographs I used students within the school as models as well as using the surrounding scenery.

After I had taken the photos I was able to start putting my magazine together. I used the programme Abode Photoshop to put the magazine together.

I used a photograph of a Goffs student with a brick wall background as the main photograph headshot for my front page. I then added a date, the titles ‘Hot Goffisip’ to the page along with story titles such as ‘Best GCSE’s in Years!’ that were accompanied by resized photographs which I had taken earlier. All the titles and photos were arranged prior to my sketched layout along with complimenting colours and sizes. By adding the finishing touches of the Goffs school logo and website address my magazine front page was complete with around fifteen over lapping and under lapping layers to the file.

Once my front page for the magazine was complete I was able to start the contents page. With the contents page I use a light blue, 40% transparent background that added my numbered article titles to. These also accompanied number photographs which were different photographs from the ones used on the front page. I also added a little competition banner to the page so that it related more to other magazine choices and added more colour.

Throughout the process of designing and making I came across a few problems. When deciding on article titles for the magazine I had to decide on titles that would be suitable for the magazine and I had to include stories titles that I would be able to take photographs of that would relate to the story title and photos that I could take within the school grounds. For example if I had chose an article title ‘McDonalds come to Goffs’ I would have needed a picture of McDonald’s food in the school cafeteria which would have been a hard photograph to take. I also had trouble finding the -time to take the photographs during school break times so that students could be included in them. During the making of the magazine I also came across a few problems as I had never used a Mac computer before so it took a bit of time to comes to grips with the software and learning how to save and open my work however I did have good knowledge of how to use Photoshop so the making part of the magazine pages wasn’t a problem.

Overall I think that my magazine pages were successful as I was able to produce the pages prior to my original sketches. I was happy with the outcome and I thought that the look of the pages were very effective. However I do believe that I could have done more to the pages if I had had more time, especially to the contents page but hopefully with the next project I will have more time and will be able to produce something much improved.