The document summarizes the author's process for completing a preliminary task to create a magazine for their secondary school. Some key points: - The author used InDesign and Photoshop software to design the magazine based on their previous media studies experience. - They titled the magazine "Haydon News" to represent the school and chose bold colors like blue, yellow, black and white that aligned with the school logo. - On the cover, they included a full-bleed photo of a smiling student to represent the happy school environment and intrigue readers. - They created sketches before designing the actual magazine to plan layouts like the cover and contents page. The final magazine mostly followed these original sketches

1. Preliminary Tasks
By Ella Grey

2. Preliminary Task Evaluation:
During the first two weeks of starting AS Media Studies, we were given a task of having to
complete a preliminary task in the style of a secondary school news magazine. To complete this
task we used the software InDesign and Photoshop. I am able to use both of these applications,
as I have previously completed media studies at GCSE level, therefore, I already knew some of
the basic skills of how to use the tools on these applications and create a magazine. I believe
that the skills I used best were both the text and shape tools, as my previous knowledge enabled
me to move text (e.g. around the page, and also bringing the letters within a word closer
together allowing all the words to be in line with one another) in the attempt of giving my
magazine an overall professional look.
I titled my magazine ‘Haydon News’ as it meant that the title was straight to the point, allowing
the audience (students and teachers) to know what the magazine would cover. I also believe
that the name I chose was a timeless name, meaning that it would appeal to all members of the
school and not feel out of date. My use of bold colours (blue, yellow, black and white) would
entice students and teachers to pick up a copy of the magazine as the colours are eye-catching
and clear as to what the magazine is about.
Furthermore, I tried to keep the house style to 4 specific colours: blue, yellow, black and white. I
decided to do this as it kept my magazine looking organised and professional as well as
appealing. The colours I have used also incorporate the colours of Haydon School’s logo and
uniform with the colours: blue, yellow, black and white. I believe that this was a good idea to
include as it means the magazine specifically relates to Haydon School.

3. On the front cover of my magazine I decided to use a picture of a female year 10 student as the
full bleed of the front cover, as the older years may typically look smarter and more mature than
some of the younger years as they are almost the oldest of the lower school and very
enthusiastic. She is represented as joyful which would reflect well on the school, demonstrating it
to be a happy, safe and joyous environment or all students who attend. This is also good as it
would make intrigue people to want to pick up a copy and see what the girl on the front is so
happy about, appealing to the audience.
Furthermore, I tried to keep all of the heading of the articles within my magazine fairly short, so
that the students wouldn’t see to many words and immediately become bored without even
reading the headings. I also made the topics displayed on the front cover relevant to a variety of
students and teachers to ensure they would find the magazine interesting to them.
In addition to this, I did not put a price on my magazine as I believe that students don’t always
have a lot of money, and would probably be more entitled to spend it on sweets or when going
out on the weekend, so keeping to magazine as ‘free’ would appeal to the students and ensure
that more copies would be picked up. However, if the magazine did become popular I would
consider putting a small price on the magazine to start with, allowing me to possibly gain a profit.
Moving forward on to my contents page, I chose to keep this very simple so that it was easy for
the students to navigate around the magazine no matter the age or reading ability of the
individual. I chose to do this as I am aware that both teachers and all levels of students would be
reading the magazine and will want to be able to access the information they are interested in
quickly. I completed this by making sure that the text was easy to read (e.g. font size), the colour
of the text was clear. In addition to this, I continued with the same house style just so I could keep
it at the consistency throughout.

4. Planning My Preliminary Task:
Ideas For
“Haydon News”
Magazine:
“Haydon
News”
Full bleed
image of
student on the
front cover
Colours of
Haydon
School
incorporated
Full bleed
image of
student on the
front cover

5. These are two original sketches I drew before
creating my magazine as a guideline of what I
thought I should include in order to make it a
successful magazine.
I did stick to the main design of my original
sketches, however, I did change a few things such
as: getting rid of the price shown on the bottom
right-hand corner of the front cover as I soon
decided that the magazine should not have a
price as young students would not have an
income and therefore may not choose to spend
the money they do have on a magazine. I also
chose to move the issue number and date to the
top of the page where it was more subtle as it is
not a major aspect of the magazine. Other than
these few small changes I chose to keep a lot of
my original ideas the same such as keeping the full
bleed image of a student on the front cover, a
large title of “Haydon News” on the top of the
cover. My sketches are not exact as I didn’t feel
like I would be using my time efficiently if I did
choose to colour in each drawing/the
background.

6. In regards to my contents page I again chose to
keep my real contents page very similar to my
original sketches as I thought my sketch of the
contents page would remain suitable for the task
of creating a school magazine. However I did
choose to make a few slight changes just to
ensure consistency and accuracy throughout my
magazine to ensure that it looked professional and
both students and teachers would want to pick up
a copy. For example some aspects I did in fact
choose to change were: the positioning of the
images displayed on the contents page that are
relevant to a few of the key/more important
stories. Furthermore, I chose to change some of
the stories as I felt like I thought of better names
when it came to actually creating the final
product.
However I did keep many things the same from my
sketches as I thought that everything else fit well
with one another and kept a professional look.