School Magazine

Magazine Analysis 2

School Magazine Analysis 1

Front Cover of School Magazine

Contents Page of School Magazine

Evaluation

The task was to use my creativity skills to produce a cover and a contents page for the Canon Palmer Catholic School magazine. In order to carry on with my task I had to do research so that I could get a general idea of how school magazines are presented. To assist me in developing my ideas, I had observed a few school magazines, which were Langdon Secondary School and Canon palmer Catholic School. I compared and contrasted both magazine covers and contents page. I found out that both school magazines had a very professional and formal outlook as they are mostly read by parents or guardians. As a result, I decided to do my magazine cover professionally to attract the attention of the target readers.
I went to take some photos with the camera provided. I took a few photos but I put my mind on one photo that I was going to use in my front cover. I sent all the photos I took to the computer from the camera using a cable, then I had to do a draft of my front cover so that I knew where I was heading. I did my draft with pencil and went over it with a black pen to make it stand out. I also did a draft for my contents page. The ‘Magnetic Lasso' tool highlights the edge as you go around the picture so it looks like this. Once you done that you can move the specific area wherever you like.
I decided to use Photoshop to create my magazine cover and contents page. I opened up an A4 sized blank page on Photoshop. Then I opened the photo I wanted to use on Photoshop and used the ‘Magnetic Lasso' tool from Photoshop to go around the photo.
I used the ‘Rectangular Marquee' tool to create the boxes on my cover. Then I filled it in with a gradient of colours, which took a lot of time to do but had a good outcome. I decided to do it as the same colour as the school’s badge. After I did that I decided to do a masthead using the ‘Horizontal Type' tool, then I placed the school logo on the back. I made some changes to the font layer. I also adjusted the colour of the masthead so that it matches the badge. After I did the masthead, I decided to add in the photo. I highlighted the edge of the photos using ‘Magnetic Lasso' tool before. I selected the photo and dragged it to the original front cover. I used the rubber tool to go around the edges so that it became smoother, which improved the appearance. I also switched the side of the photo from left to right.
As it seemed slightly plain, I decided to change the background to another colour. In the photo her clothes are black (uniform) so I had chosen to change the background black as well to match it.
Once I had the basic idea prepared, I decided to add in the rest of the small features. I added the date of the issue using the ‘Horizontal Type' tool. I added the writing inside using the ‘Horizontal Type' tool. I added ‘Free Parker Pen Inside’ as most magazines give out freebies to attract more people. I used the ‘Custom Shape' tool to create a ‘starburst’, then I placed it on the bottom right-hand corner. And then I filled it with the same colour as the badge and the masthead.
After I did that I added in the cover lines. On my draft there are 4 cover lines altogether. I added the main cover line first of all. It is called ‘A Star is Born in Canon Palmer’.I changed the colour of the word ‘Star’ to make it stand out. And I re-adjusted the size of the words to make it like a real magazine. I also changed the size of the font to improve the overall presentation. After the main cover line, I decided to add the other normal cover lines to make it look like a real magazine. I used the same technique to add all other cover lines in.
That is the final step for my magazine cover. The mistake that I made in this was the background. On my draft, I did it as a plain background, but I changed it to black in order to blend in the main image. I also changed the order of some of the cover lines and the colour of the ‘starburst’. On my draft I was going to add a barcode, but because this is a school’s magazine, no one is going to buy it so I decided to get rid of it. By re-adjusting my mistakes I successfully accomplished my cover page. Then I started my contents page.
To start my contents page, I looked at different contents pages in other magazines. Once again, it had a professional outlook and was also similar to the title page; similar colour has been used, and the font and font size was also the same. So I did another draft of the contents page. It wasn’t very detailed, as I did not know what cover lines I was going to put in, so I just did the layout and the colour scheme of the page. I used the front page as a template to help me create my contents page. I used the same layout and colour.
I added a few images, which I took from the same camera. I used the same technique to cut around the edge using ‘Magnetic Lasso' tool and blend it in with the background using the ‘Eraser’. I added three images on the right hand side because texts are going to be placed on the left. My next step was to add the logo. I do not want it to look exactly like my front cover, so I decided to insert the logo in a different place. I decided to place the logo on the bottom left-hand corner. To make it look more stylish and less plain, I tilted it slightly. This is the main cover line. I changed the colour of the word ‘Star’ to make it stand out more, and I re-adjusted the size of the words to make it look better presented. To tilt the image, I selected the layer and went to ‘edit’ selected ‘Transform’ and clicked on rotate to turn it slightly to the left, then I pressed ‘enter’ and increased the size of the logo.
However, I was confronted by a problem, when I expanded the image; the size of the pixels increased, which made the overall image unclear. Therefore I decided to use ‘blur’ filter from Photoshop to solve the problem. In order to solve my problem I clicked on ‘Filter’ pointed at ‘Blur’ and selected ‘Gaussian Blur’.
I wasn’t too certain on what cover lines to put in. I decided that I had to use the same ones I had used previously for my front page so the two pages match more, which meant that I had four cover lines already. However, I need more so I made a list of all the cover lines and chose the correct ones. I got some more ideas from the school magazine and then I added all the cover articles and the page numbers. I also added ‘drop shadow’ and ‘inner shadow’ to all the texts so it becomes clear and easier to read.
Overall, I think I did a good job on my work. I followed my plan and finished it successfully. I had accomplished all of this within two weeks and did not rush it on the last minute. I planned it out very well and finished it on time. Other magazines helped me out a lot as well; looking at them gave me an idea of how the layout of magazines are supposed to be. School magazines looked very different from normal magazines. Normal magazines can be very colourful and bright but all the school magazines I looked at were mainly formal. I could have improved on a few things. I could have worked a bit more on the contents page and I could have downloaded some new fonts and used them for my contents page. I could have changed the font around to make it more attractive and to make it stand out better. I also could have used more people as in most school magazines there are images of many students in various locations. Also in the real school magazines, it’s possible to see the background of students, therefore from those images I should have also showed the background instead of blending in all the pictures. So there were a few mistakes that I had done during my task, but I did finish it on time and used appropriate tools and programs to create the work. I could have used a range of other effects and techniques to make my magazine more eye-catching from average school magazines but I felt that too much change would not make it look like an actual school magazine. In general, I approved of my work and was quite happy with the overall outcome.