To produce the Front page and Contents page of a new school/college magazine.
Completing this task will help me gain skills that are necessary for the production of my main task. I will use the softwares that I plan to use for my main task, allowing me develop confidence when using them.
Research:
To help my with this task, I first looked at old issues of my school's magazines. However, this only helped with what content I should include and not with layout as my school produces newspapers not magazines.
Therefore, to help me with the layout I researched school and college magazines on the Interenet, finding images such as these:
In school and college magazines, typical content includes:
- The latest school news
- Upcoming field trips information and past field trip reviews
- Sporting fixtures and reviews
- School calender (with term dates, holiday dates etc)
- Advice collumns
- Jokes/ funny stories/ cartoons (usually created by students)
- Leaving or new teachers and students
- Information on school facilities
- Exam/Ofsted Success
- Educational quizzes and educational facts
- School questionnaires/polls
- Music reviews (from the school band/ choir or local bands with members from the school)
- Advertisements from local businesses
The magazines tend to be written by students and perhaps a few teachers who submit features. The students who write it are either regular students who are part of the production and editing team and who are usually media students, or items can be submitted by any student outside of this group. Items such as reviews and cartoons are typically submitted by other students.
There usually tends to be special editions of a school's magazine for important holidays like Christmas and Easter, which would feature items related to the holiday.
Planning:
I have produced a computerised plan for the layout of my magazine to help me when making my actual production.
Front Page-
Contents Page-
First Draft:
I like the main image as it represents typical students. I also like that the sub headings are very easy to read when over the top of the image. However, I am not sure about the light blue colour and I feel the mast head does not stand out enough.
I like the layout of the contents page as it is easy to understand and the images are relevant, but again I do not like this shade of blue.
Final:
I feel that this darker blue is much more effective as it looks more sophisticated yet still young, which would compliment a college.
The new layout on the front cover means the mast head is clearer to see and the new main image still allows for the sub headings to be easily seen.
I have only changed the background colour and the font of "CONTENTS" for this page. The colour of this page needed to be changed for it to fit in with the house style.
