Preliminary Task!

For my preliminary task, I had to create a school magazine. This included a front cover and contents page as shown.

As i wanted to base my school magazine on sixth from, i chose to use a student from the sixth form in a medium close up for my main image on the front cover. I did this as it would make it clear to my target audience (the sixth form) that it would appeal to them and had topics which they would be able to relate to. 

I also chose my main cover 'New Sixth Form Head Boy', as it related directly to the main image of my front cover. I knew that this was a good thing to do as when completing my research  i found of that the main image and main headline always link together. 

Based on my questionnaire  I was able to gather information about what the sixth form wanted to read about and what would interest them. One of the questions asked on my questionnaire was 'would you like it to be information based or have actives '. My feedback on this question as that 50% of the sixth form wanted a mixture of both.  Because of this, I decided that i would include information pages such as 'Upcoming events' and 'Message from Mr Foley'. However to achieve the balance of what people wanted, I also included activities such as 'Win a brand new laptop' and 'Weekly maths quiz'. 

Based on the codes and conventions task i had already completed, I was able to use it to help me complete this magazine.I used my knowledge of what went wrong and tried to correctly apply it this time round. An example of this was how i tried to keep my front cover quite plain so that my main cover line wouldn't be mistaken for any of the other cover lines - it was clear. I also used what went well on my codes and conventions task to help me complete this. An example of this would be the colour consistency of red and black. I did this so that looked professional, but also so that it matched the genre of magazine being a 'STACS' magazine. 

My typography used was one that was bold, but also very smart so that it again matched my genre of music chosen being a sixth form magazine. This would also appeal to my chosen target audience and was very appropriate. 

I chose for my contents page to be kept quite plain and simple as i didn't want it to be too busy and take the audiences focus off what was inside of the magazine. I also did this as generally, for genres like sixth form magazines, the contents pages are kept quite simple. 

Completing this task has again allowed me to improve my skills on how to make a magazine which will help me when completing my main task. Also, it will be beneficial for me to look back on and take inspiration from the good aspects of my magazine, and improve upon the things that weren't as good.