School Magazine Evaluation

• Explain what you were trying to achieve
What I was trying to achieve with the creation of my front cover and contents page were to show a school magazine, I could have chosen any school but I decided to make my magazine based on my school: Kelsey Park Sports College.

• Highlight your strengths: What went well? What went to plan?
The strengths of the creation of this front cover and contents page were mainly based on my contents page. What I think went well was the way I made the layout of my contents page, but also the background colours I used (this was on both my front cover and contents page).

• What was deliberate? What coincidence?
In terms of creating my magazine cover and contents page, nothing was created deliberately or by coincidence.

• Where are your weaknesses? What were the problems?
I feel that I only had one major weakness, which was creating the colour of my background, I knew that I could control the gradient of 1 colour, but I didn’t know how to control the gradient using 2 colours, but with a little help, I managed to control the gradient of 2 colours. However, after doing this and leaving this task for a week, I had completely forgotten how to control this, so this was a problem when it came to experimenting with different background colours.

• What had you intended to do? Why did it not work?
One of the things I intended to do was to get an image of a student in my fellow year holding either a football or a basketball (I decided on a basketball) and then use that as my main cover picture, however I could not do this due to lack of time that I had to create the magazine cover and contents page and I also didn’t do this because my magazine was for students ages 11 to 16, but then because I had images of students older than this on my front cover, I had to change my target audience from 11 to 16 year olds, to 11 to 18 year olds and I also used a picture of someone who appears to be in either year 8 or year 9 as my main cover picture.

• Compare your work to the standard OCR example (on W Drive)
The colour of the background used is the same; however the OCR example uses a darker shade of yellow, whereas I have used a lighter shade of yellow mixed with black (the gradient). The font size of the text used in the OCR example draw my eyes towards that specific bit of what I am viewing, and I think that this works well to the advantage of the creator, whereas the text I use isn’t big enough to draw readers into anything specific in my opinion. My work compared to the OCR example doesn’t really feel as professional, or authentic as the example is, but as this was only the preliminary exercise, it doesn’t really matter how professional it is, but when it comes to the main task, I would have to make sure that my magazine cover and contents page look a lot more professional, this would involve: Making the cover of the magazine look a bit more untidy, but still upholding that professional level of work, using bigger font sizes to draw readers in to specific parts, bascially things that would make my magazine a lot more interesting.

• What have you learnt about Media Production as a result of this process?
I feel that I have learned how to use a desktop publisher (Adobe InDesign) to a certain standard, but I do not know everything about that (this would take quite a while in my opinion to grasp) but then creating my front cover and magazine didn’t take me long to grasp certain tools used whilst creating these products.

• What have you learnt about the task and the way you work?
What I have learnt about the task was that sometimes it takes experience to produce something of a good quality, but then other times, to produce good quality work can come to mind instantly. The way I work is that I normally act on impulses and just throw out ideas when I’m in the planning stages which help me to make something of a good quality, but here, I never did that which was quite weird for me, hence why I feel that my work isn’t at the best quality it could be at.

• How will you change the way you approach the main task?
In terms of approaching the main task, I will make sure that after everything new I learn, I will write down notes on how to do those specific new things that I have learnt so that I don’t forget how to do it again (this could refer to how to create a gradient using 2 colours) and I would make sure that I have all the resources I need to make sure that creation of the main task runs smoothly.

• What lessons have you learnt?
After a lot of thought, I can say that I have learnt to put more effort into everything I create, and give myself more time to think of ideas for my creations.

My magazine cover and contents page

Here is my magazine cover and my contents page. I need feedback in order to see what was good about this and what would need chnging (if anything), please can you give some as it would be very helpful to me. Thank you.

Summary of school magazine

Today involves me writing a summary for the purpose of my school magazine, and identifying who my target audience is.
I will be making a magazine aimed at young boy students in secondary school with an age range of 11 and 18 year olds but with a secondary audience of parents, consisting of all nationalities and religions.
The purpose of the school magazine will be to tell the students what is going on around their school, talking about what trips have been organised or are being organised at the current time.
The front cover of my magazine will include a picture in the middle of the cover, of a student in medium close-up, holding either a basketball or a football in their hands...possilby about to either kick the football or throw the basketball, I may however include one or two more images of students around the school. As my front cover is based on my school Kelsey Park Sports College the colours I am going to be using are a light yellow combined with some black, as they are the school colours.
I have to make sure that I have a border, making sure that I do not put any pictures or text outside the border of the cover.
My knowledge of InDesign is okay, but I would like my knowledge of it to be better, hence why in the coming weeks of making my front cover, I will be asking help on how to use InDesign much better than I already can.

Starting The Preliminary Excercise

Today and until next week thursday, I began planning my preliminary excercise which will allow me to start the coursework later on in the year once I pass this excercise. It is all based on making a school magazine.
At 1st, I thought I would do my designs on the computer, but then I thought that it would be easier if I hand drew my designs and then scan them allowing users to view them.
I also have to decide what type of school magazine I will design, meaning what will be the purpose of the magazine and I also have to decide who the audience is going to be.
Once all of this is done, I can then move onto the production part of this preliminary excercise, this means that I would be able to create the school magazine of my choice for real.