Preliminary Task

The first things I have to do on my preliminary task page is research into school magazines. In particular I have to analyse the front covers for more information and experience telling me how I will eventually complete mine, what i like and don’t like etc.

Here is my first School Magazine Front Cover Analysis.

The thing that you primarily notice when you view this front cover is the picture of the female student, it is the main image on the page and stands out. It was put on the right hand side of the page with the words and titles cleverly overlapping the main image. By viewing this image alone you can immediately recognise what the magazine will be about inside so that means it is a very general image about school work or life. The use of text in this magazine has been used to attract parents and children.

The “Teenage stress” font has been designed to attract the younger audience, where as the rest of the fonts on the magazine are using a more formal mode of address to compliment the older audiences. Colour’s have been kept to a minimum, they’re not too over whelming yet they add just enough to make people interested.

The image on the front is also of a young girl in school uniform, which links to the theme of the magazine so we know what we are looking at before we even pick it up.The masthead “chs magazine” is very suitable because they have obviously taken the schools name and abbreviated it to make it more like a magazine title so that it is more relevant to pupils who will be the main audience.

There is not a main colour scheme for this magazine exactly because there is a large range of colours used on the front cover such as the white writing, titles and bright pink, green, orange and blue text boxes with a splash of yellow writing along the bottom of the page.

Overall I love the sleek modern design of this magazine which creates the thought that the magazine will cost more than it actually does. It looks like someone with a lot of knowledge into layout ans styles has crated this school magazine.

Below is my second School Magazine Front Cover Analysis.

The first thing that stands out on the page is the Masthead. It reads “chosen hill” so it must be the name of the school or an abbreviated version of the schools name to engage young readers or pupils but mostly to make it sound less formal but more like a casual school magazine. Also the subtitle  highlights the fact that the magazine is issued monthly to let the readers know when the next copy of the magazine will be coming out so that there is no confusion on when it is or isn’t.

The strap line at the top tells us the reader that this was the issue of October 2012, this will also let the reader know when the next issue will be out but most importantly it tells us that this magazine is free although it must only be for school pupils because of the fact of it being a school magazine and only talking about things relevant to their own school.

The main image on the front cover of the magazine is obviously of a pupil of the school looking very casual in her own jacket but with tidy uniform presented underneath. She has happy facial expressions to connect to the feel of the magazine, its bold and colourful layout matches perfectly.

The style of the magazine looks kind of cheap. Considering it is a free magazine for the pupils the publishers which were probably students obviously are working on a very low budget. The layout of the front cover looks informal, almost like it was thrown together by a beginner, as if it wasn’t planned. The font is very average, not very exciting, it looks like the cover was made on publisher or word as thats the easiest, cheapest option to make it on, but not the best looking. Which again brings it back to the thoughts that it was done by an average student and not an expert designer or publisher.

It contains articles that are only relevant to that particular school so it is aimed at the pupils and their intrest’s and hobbies altogether. Furthermore it addresses the readers with casual ease as it gives sneak peeks about the things that will be inside the magazine such as problems and issues in their school, the school house system and the line at the bottom looks very serious as the tone is given off that there is a problem with the school and the black strap line and white bold writing highlights this.

Overall i think the magazine is very average and cheap looking but it was a good effort by a pupil somewhere who obviously did not have much knowledge in the area.

 The next thing I have to do for my preliminary task page is two contents pages analysis’. This will further my research into school magazines and help me more when it comes to creating my own.

Here is my first and second School Magazine Contents Page Analysis.

Below is my second School Magazine Contents Page Analysis.

The next thing I have to do for my preliminary task is to make up a school magazine questionnaire about my cover and contents pages and get my peers to fill out there answers and give me feedback so that I have a better understanding for how to make my magazine and what to put inside it so that pupils wi

ll be interested in it.

My School Magazine Questionnaire.

1) What Gender are you?

( ) Male

( ) Female

2) What age are you?

( ) 12-13

( ) 14-15

( ) 16-17

( ) 18-19

3) Have you ever read a school magazine?

( ) Yes

( ) No

4) How often do you think our school magazine should be published?

( ) Weekly

( ) Monthly

( ) Quarterly(seasonally themed)

( ) Yearly

5) What would you like our school magazine to be called?

( ) St Catherine's College School Magazine

( ) Cor Unum

( ) St Cats -daily/weekly/quarterly/yearly

( ) SCCA -(St Catherines College Armagh)

6) What would you like to see inside our school magazine?

( ) School Gossip

( ) Upcoming events

( ) Details of after school clubs

( ) Agony aunt

( ) UCAS information and courses

( ) School competitions

( ) How to get involved in extra curricular activities locally

( ) School Achievements

( ) Interviews of head girls/prefects

7) What colour scheme would you like our school magaine to have?

( ) Black/Red/Yellow/Green/White

( ) Red/Yellow/Green/White

( ) Black/Red/Yellow/White

9) Who would you like to see on the front cover of the magazine?

( ) Head girls

( ) Prefects

( ) Students

( ) Top achievers

( ) The Principal

10) Would you pay for our school magazine?

( ) Yes

( ) No

My School Questionnaire Analysis.

Firstly with my questionnaire I needed to determine the gender my school magazine will be aimed towards. From this set of results I can see that 20 students have completed my questionnaire and over three quarters of them were female. This teaches me that my magazine needs to be specifically designed so that mostly girls will take interest into it, but so that its readable for a boy too.

This pie chart tells me that 12/20 students were 16-17, considering this is sixth for age for students, this question has made me aware of the age groups that will also read a school magazine and so now my school magazine will be suited and aimed at sixth form for a target audience. 

 This was a question I was particularly interested about as I was intrigued to see weather students have actually read a school magazine so that they know what they like and don't like inside a magazine, which would help me gather more accurate information for the next questions asked. These results indicate the fact that most school children have never before read a school magazine. Maybe the school magazines in the past haven't stood out to the students or there was just never one available, Either way I will make sure my magazine will stand out and be eye catching so that students will want to read it.

From my research and analysis' on school magazines front covers I can tell that most school magazines use the name of the school as the masthead as it makes it more easily recognizable and specific to that school. To give my students a choice on what they want their school magazine to be called I came up with three options related to our schools name and through this I have decided to call my magazine St Cats (weekly/monthly/quarterly) depending on weather my magazine will be issued weekly, monthly or quarterly)

/i included this question as i was interested to see what colour schemes people of my age like best as well as keeping in line with the school colours. From my results i can see that all of the school colours, black, green, red, white and yellow was most popular but to make them more suited to sixth forms i will tone them down to be sophisticated pastel colours.

The most popular result here with 8/20 people voting for it was monthly. I am glad of this as I think montly is the best option, If it was done weekly it would be hard to gather enough information for a full magazine each week and also i think people would get bored of it. With the monthly option at least they will keep up to date.

From this bar chart i can see that three quarters of people who took my questionnaire would not like to pay for their school magazine. I think that paying for the school magazine would be impractical as sixth forms already have so much to pay for, it should be a fun free read.

14/20 people that took my questionnaire would prefer to see students on the front cover, i was interested in asking this question as it intruiged me to see weather they wanted to see themselves or not, obviously they do.

My Prezi.

Here is my selfie interview for an overview of my school magazine.

My School Magazine front cover flatplan 1.

My School Magazine front cover flatplan 2.

Next is my first contents page flatplan.

Here is my final Contents page flatplan.

My Photoshoot plan.

School Magazine Photographs.

For this task I took multiple photos of my friends in school in different positions and poses so that i had choices for my cover and contents page, I used pic collage on my iPhone to create a collage of photos for both the contents and cover page and pitch them to my friends to see what they think the best choice was! As you can see I did this using twitter and asked my friends to tweet me their answers. The most popular answer was picture one so I have decided to use this for my front cover. For my contents page pictures they have selected 3/6 photos each and i will choose the most popular ones.

School Magazine Draft.

Here I have used Photoshop to create a draft for my school magazine cover and contents page. I have not had previous Photoshop experience so I am quite pleased with these as my first pieces of work on it, even though i think i can do better with more practice.

My draft for my school magazine front cover.

My draft for my school magazine contents page.

My Preliminary Task : School Magazine Evaluation!