School Magazine

For the preliminary task of my coursework I had to produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. I began by taking the relevant photos around school before creating the page in Adobe Photoshop.

Overall I think my magazine cover was a success and I managed to capture the codes and conventions of a magazine effectively. This is because the masthead is bold and eye-catching, and the magazine uses a medium close-up of the main subject, similar to a real magazine. I think the variety of fonts (the cover lines) on the page would appeal to the target audience (school students), as they make the page look more interesting and are appropriate to the different articles.

I tried to make the colour scheme fit with the logo in the top right hand corner of the page, using blue, red and pale yellow. I think the blue works well, however as I made the logo quite transparent, the red colour is almost too pale and doesn't fit very well with the background image. I would probably change this if I had more time. Initially I made the image black and white, but came to the conclusion that this made the page look dull and boring, which wouldn't appeal to a younger audience so I decided that it looked better in colour.

I used a transparency tool to make the image fade out at the top which I think looks effective. However, with the plain white, I think the masthead looks quite plain, especially with the font used. If I was to improve it, I would change the font to make it appear more striking. Also, when taking the photo, I think it would have been better to capture the main subject with a simple background so the text could easily stand out.