School magazine project

As part of our coursework we got set the task of designing and making the front cover and contents page for a school magazine, myself and Beth decided that we would work together on this task making two magazine issues instead of one. We then brain stormed and worked out our target audience, name of magazine, masthead, what issues we would make, and the contents.

We agreed that our target audience would be college students, therefore ages 16-19. The collage we made our magazine for was 'Primrose Arts College' we decided on basing our magazine on an arts collage because art is generally what interests us and thought we could would have a good input on the magazine as the events we included would be things that we would do and we could relate to how art students would feel about these events.

When it came to actually making our magazines we agreed on making a November and December issue, these would include

- A photography trip to Lapland
- A winter beauty fashion show
- A free calender for next year, designed and made my students
- A Christmas carol concert

- A winter ball

- A pantomime

These events where chosen because they all tied in with the art's college, each different event specialised for each different subject, these being photography, hair and beauty, graphic and art design, big band and orchestra, set design and performing arts.

We used the main image on the front covers to advertise one of these events. The November issue advertising the winter beauty and fashion show. For this picture i got one of my friends to be my model, and did her make-up to represent how i thought it would be shown in a fashion show, i then focused on how i thought a photography student would take this picture, thinking about the lighting, positioning and facial expressions. After taken a variety of pictures, i found one that i thought would suit a front cover of a magazine well and edited it to give it a more glamorous feel to it. The December issue advertised the photography trip to Lapland,  but was taken for a more humorous approach to the trip, as it just shows students dressing up. On this front cover i tried to make it as interesting to the eye as i could, adding different images at the bottom of the page to advertise the winter ball, and text going up vertically along the page.

AS Media - Magazine Cover

These are the front covers of two different school magazines. They have both used a bold main image which advertises what the magazine is about it also makes the magazine eye catching and appealing to the reader. The master head in this case 'HighProfile' and 'FFH' inform the reader of what the initial title is, but in some cases they abbreviate the headings like 'FFH' which implies that the magazine should be popular enough that the reader should know what the master head stands for. On both front covers there are selling lines, these are to draw the reader into buying the the magazine and make it look and sound more interesting. Both magazines have chosen to have a main image on their front covers, these pictures show the main story the magazine is trying to sell. i personally think that FFH has a more interesting front cover because there is more to look at on the page, it uses bold and bright colours which are eye catching and draw you to the important areas of the cover which inform you on the magazine itself.

AS level media - company magazine

Today we looked at the presentational values of the front cover of Company magazine. We studied the front cover in great detail, using 'PALL' to help we discovering what the colours symbolised and how it can draw attention to different areas, how pictures can create different moods and senses of feelings and emotion, how company design their magazine front cover to benefit their selling profits, and how to draw the buyers in. After looking and analysing the font cover we then gave a small presentation to the rest of the class explaining what we looked at and are thoughts and opinions.

AS Level Media

First Lesson:

Today we discussed the course outline. We got given a summary of our syllabus that we will be working on for the next year.
In particular we studied the cause of representation within the media. Representation is the constructed and mediated presentation of people, things, ideas and places and the process by which the media presents the 'real world'
We focused on an booklet that advertised a beach in north Carolina, we used 'PALL' to help us analyse in full detail.
Purpose: What they are selling, is it a popular product, whats the overall message the booklet is trying to convey.
Audience: How we feel about the advert, what sort of people would buy the products, to analyse the presentational values of the booklet, what the avert suggest about peoples lifestyles,  and what assumptions the image makes about the reader.language and layout
Language: What have they used to hook you in and why? Was the language effective and encouraging.
Layout: Describing the pictures in the advert and how effective they are, does the picture undermine anyone?