Evaluation of School magazine

For our first project of creating a school magazine I used existing conventions of a masthead, special edition cover lines and a puff to boost the schools status and engage the person to read the magazine more. For the front cover we were asked to include a mid shot face on picture of someone. I followed the convention of having a picture to the right hand side so it makes you want to turn over however I used a candid shot with a side profile of my models face. If I used a front portrait like others it would make my page bolder and grab a reader’s attention instantly.

My target audience was 15-19, I felt that age was suitable as I chose to make mine 6th form based so my age group would appeal to those still studying and make them feel inspired to work but mainly for those looking at new places to study. Due to my chosen audience I had to represent my magazine to them. I feel I have done that by my feature article photo having the girl smiling, leaning in gently, hands open so a warming friendly look. Also the photos on my contents page I have a group candid shot all engaged in a conversation a long shot of two girls walking along in motion and a solo picture in an art lesson. All my photos were deliberately smiling and natural to portray a particular tone to the 6th form that it’s full of laughter, fun, giggles and a chilled atmosphere to attract the audience. I feel the style and overall impression of my magazine was serious but quirky, it still shows the educational purpose through the typography of italic rich writing and my main picture the model was holding work books but then to have the youthful edge to appeal to my age group, I painted in bricks bright vibrant colours. Colour was effective in my contents page the main box was yellow to link with the font of my masthead and then a black box made a bold statement for them to look at. Although for my front page I feel I could have made it more edgy to attract my audience as my articles are quite fun and bizarre things, perhaps if I used a more comic and scruffy main font it would reflect the contents more. However the layout of my contents page represents and attracts the audience as the boxes and pictures are randomly placed but they are all simple, clear and easy to locate.

When constructing my magazine, a difficulty was importing & cutting pictures I first started by using the rubber but I found it very time consuming and hard so I used the magnetic lasso tool which was really effective as it was easy and made a neater cut. When trying to apply text or using the paintbrush, I discovered that layers were needed and using them was new to me but I have become accustomed to it now. I really enjoyed the blur, smudge and sharpen tool for the photos but unfortunately they didn’t look right with my photos on the page. Zoom and move tool was handy in the making of my front cover but my biggest difficulty was the resizing of pictures that were brought onto layers and the correct measurements for pages.

Overall, I am impressed with my magazine. I feel I have really pushed and developed my skills and understanding of photo shop however if I was to improve or do it again I would focus harder on my target audience by creating the style and tone to really reach out to them. Also, perhaps the contexts of my magazine could be stronger ideas and more relevant to a sixth student.