The document describes a preliminary task to create a school magazine cover and contents page in preparation for a controlled assessment. It discusses researching other magazines to determine design elements like consistent theme, logo placement, and headline styles. Sketches were created for the cover and contents page layouts. The process of designing the cover in Photoshop is then outlined, including cropping and adjusting an image, adding a gradient background, inserting the magazine title and tagline, and including cover stories. The student learned about magazine design conventions and gained experience using Photoshop that will help with their main assessment task.

1. THE PRELIMINARY
TASK

2. The Task Itself
• As a preliminary task, I was asked to create a school magazine
(front cover and contents page) in preparation for my controlled
assessment where I will be asked to create a front cover and
contents page of a music magazine.
• This task was mainly to allow me to get to grips with the
software, allowing me to experiment and get used to using it with
more confidence than before. Using this software before starting
work on my main task also gave me the space to make
mistakes, learn how to correct them and know what goes
well, what I should avoid. This gave me an insight on how I would
be able to complete my main task to the best of my
ability, hopefully gaining the highest marks.

3. My Research
• Before completing the task, I completed some research by
analysing another schools magazine.
• I realised that it is essential to have a consistent theme, the colours
should be complimentary to each other, and easy on the eye.
Nothing too bright, or too out there and the colours should NOT be
unrelated. I based my colours and fonts to create a theme of mainly
purple and white with slight variation in colours and fonts.
• I also realised through my research that the school logo is preferred
to be present. Looking at various different examples of school
magazines, I discovered the most common positioning of the logo
is for it to be placed in a corner, and that is what I have
incorporated into my school magazine.

4. My Research
• After comparing other magazines to school magazine, I found that
a grand majority of other magazines had a front cover provided
with a barcode. However, as school magazines are simply
distributed and not sold, I realised that it was unnecessary and not
needed for me to add the barcode on to my design, hence leaving it
out.
• Headlines are a main part of the front cover, arguably one of the
most important parts as they are what grabs the readers attention
and, quite frankly, are the deal breakers. They must be
short, snappy, straight to the point, and have some level of
excitement or intrigue that will spike the readers interest to pick up
the magazine and read more. From research, I found that the main
story’s headline is usually bigger than the others as it tends to
attract the most attention. Bearing this in mind I separated my main
story headline from the others to create a similar effect.

5. • My consistent theme and colour scheme.

6. Planning and Designs
• Target Audience: Girls of the Sixth Form
• Possible Title Ideas: PManor
• Main Image: Medium close up of student (girl) - side view
• Main Cover Line: Head Boy and Head Girl Scandalous Romance
• Additional Key Images: Logo of the School
• Additional cover lines: PManor academy status updates, Top 10 Best
Dressed at charity xmas party, Stress over as January Exams come
to an end, New Uniform Policy- Yay or Nay?
• Typography:
• Background Colour/ Images: Image- Medium close up of student
side view. Colour- Purple and white top to bottom gradient
• Technical Consideration: Camera, Green Screen, Photoshop
CS4, Student-Girl- Model

7. Sketch of Front Cover
This was a sketch of what I planned to be
doing for my front cover.
However, although some ideas have
remained constant , such as the name and
the way it is printed on to the front
cover, I found that I was going to have to
make some changes to accommodate my
new ideas and improvements.

8. Sketch of Contents Page
The idea behind my contents page was really
simple, and I found that I was able to outline
many of my ideas in simple sketches. I had the
‘Contents’ going down the side of the
page, separated from the rest of the page by a
bold line to give some sort of structure. I then
had the stories I intended to use going
down, followed by the page numbers. I kept the
logo the same as the one on the front cover to
create some consistency and placed it in the top
right corner as that is where it seemed to be
placed best.

9. Proposal Form
This is a copy of some of my
brainstormed ideas regarding the front
cover. I have made various changes but
the ideas all stemmed from what
appeared on the sheet.

10. The Process- The Main Image
First thing I did after choosing my main image, was
to get rid of the green screened background, and
crop the image, as can be seen.

11. The Process
• I then changed the background, placing a purple and white
gradient. However I found that the background was too dark so I
increased the brightness.

12. The Process
• I then went to add the title of my
magazine. I gave it the unique shape
by inserting the text ‘P M’ individually
first and then adding ‘Anor’ to the
side to make it look quirkier and more
appealing. I chose the strange
coloured pattern overlay as it stood
out and corresponded well with my
theme.

13. The Process
• After that I proceeded to insert
the slogan for my magazine
‘Your school! Your magazine!’
• I chose the font as it contrasted
with the title nicely. However
the colour of the font was similar
to the students headscarf so I
bevelled, embossed and added
an outer glow for it to stand out
and look more appealing.

14. The Process
• Finally I included the main
cover stories. I couldn’t find a
good font colour that stood out
from the main image and the
background, so after some time
I decided to place the text in a
filled in box, where I then
changed the opacity so that it
wasn’t overlapping everything
but still giving more emphasis
to the white text.
• I also added an issue number
and the school logo in the
corner to finalise the magazine
as a final touch.

15. What have I learnt?
• After completing this preliminary task, I learnt various different
things that I know will come to help me in my controlled
assessment task.
• I came to grips with the Photoshop software programme, learning
how to manipulate images, and the various different effects I can
apply to them to improve and edit them.
• I also learned the main connotation and denotations of magazines
and what I must include and the things that I should avoid. This
helped give me an idea of the things I will have to think through
when planning my music magazine for my coursework.

16. Final Front Cover

17. Final Contents Page