This document discusses the author's preliminary task of creating a school magazine cover and contents page using Photoshop. The author learned skills like photo editing and page layout that will help with their main task of creating a music magazine. For the school magazine, the author chose fonts, images, and stories to appeal to both male and female students. Feedback from analyzing another school magazine and adjusting their own design helped improve it. Through this preliminary work, the author gained experience with Photoshop and page design that will allow them to create a higher quality music magazine.

1. PRELIMINARY TASK
SCHOOL MAGAZINE

2. Brief
• My coursework task 1 for media studies was to create a school magazine, front cover and
contents page. I decided to use Photoshop to create my magazine because you can play with
effect, photo placing and different font sizes and colours. The reason we are creating these
school magazines are to give us the skills and experience needed to embark on our main task
of creating a music magazine front cover, contents page and double page spread. My school
magazine wont be as successful quality wise as my music magazine because I am not fully
aware of the software therefore I was bound to make mistakes whereas now I am more
familiar and have a better understanding so I will apply that to my music magazine.

3. Analysis of another school magazine front cover.
Title of the
magazine is very
masculine, not
only because is it
Main image of red but because it
two girls this says first eleven
will help which has
appeal to girl connotations of a
students and football team.
parents of
Junior addition
girls.
created to appeal to
Main images the children
three boys themselves ,because
included this will they have the biggest
appeal to young influence on parent,
boys, little boy so if they want to go
reading and their parents are
smiling to show more likely to send
he is enjoying them.
himself.
The fact that it is a
boarding school
Secondary stories,
parents will want to
mentions the Olympics
know their child is
this shows the school
safe ,the mention of
gets involved in what's
be safe online as a
going on in society and
secondary story will
wants to get the kids
help assure parents
involved which makes
of their Childs safety.
them aware.

7. Front cover and contents sketch
• As you can see I have used same font and style for titles to not make it to complicated and
used one theme to make the magazine more formal, as I am trying to appeal to young adults.
I have also used the same logo on both pages and both in same position to enhance
continuity, this will help audience recognise everything is linked together. I decided to label
the main image slightly to the left because i dint want it in the centre to show it was not my
main vocal point, the title I want to make just as important because it is not a well
established mad so i want people to see the name.

8. School magazine.

9. Before
Initially I had the contents in just plain
yellow because I thought that would
appeal to the audience. Yellow is
normally associated with femininity, my
school magazine is focused on male and After
female so I decided to merge the black
and yellow together to make it 50/50
and appeal to both genders.

10. This is the original image I
took of a sixth form
student, this is a medium
close up where you can
only see half the body.
From the original photo I used
photo shop to cut out only the
student because the green
screen had no relevance. To
cut out the image I used the
magnetic lasso tool as it was
the easy for me to use also I
had to use smug tool because
some of the green still was still
showing through gaps in her
hair.
I decided not to make the
image cover the title because
my magazine is not well
established and I want my title
to appeal to the audience.

11. I decided to take my photo using a
green screen believe by using the
green screen I would get less light
reflection which would of effected
my image. I also asked the model to
wear her student card badge so the
students knew she was a sixth form
student at the school their for they
can relate to her and also she can be
seen as a role model.

12. Conclusion
• This preliminary task of creating a school magazine has helped me gain knowledge and also
helped me understand how to work around applications used such as photo shop. My school
magazine will be better than my school magazine as I know have a better understanding of
Photoshop , also I now know to take a variety of different photos to give me a choice of the
best instead of being settled on one. I also know were to arrange my things on the cover and
contest for example images and secondary stories, and learnt that a good page does not
necessarily mean cramping it with loads of images and text. Overall this preliminary task was
extremely important because i can now apply the skills learnt to my main task the music
magazine.