My Preliminary Task - Front Cover and Contents Page 1. The student learned about using digital cameras, photo manipulation software like Photoshop, and page layout software like InDesign to construct the front cover and contents page of a mock magazine. 2. Creating the front cover involved using a digital camera to take photos, learning photo editing in Photoshop, and page design in InDesign. For the contents page, the student used columns and text boxes in InDesign but noted areas for improvement like better image editing and design. 3. Overall, the process taught the importance of design and layout and provided experience with multimedia technologies for constructing media products.

1. My Preliminary Task - Front Cover and Contents Page
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms
and conventions of real media products?
2. What have you learnt about the technologies from the
process of constructing this product

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media
products?
Front Cover - Similarities
Masthead
Main cover lines
Main Image
Price
Consistent
Colour
Theme

3. Front cover - Differences
The main image used on both of these front covers are The positioning of the masthead is both different on Vogue and
from a different angle and shot size. The image on my my college magazine. The Vogue masthead fills a quarter of the
magazine is a front image whereas the image on Vogue is page and fills the top quarter of the magazine. My masthead is
a sided body view. positioned in the top left hand corner of the page.
The position of the two images are
different too – the female on Vogue is
centred in the middle of the front cover
page. Whereas the image of the lad on
the front cover of my magazine is
positioned to the right of the image to
keep in line with the rules of third.
The pricing of the magazine are different
on both the magazines – my magazine is
shown as free in the starred bubble,
whereas Vogue is £4.00.
The positioning of the cover lines are both
different on my college magazine and the
Vogue magazine. Vogue has more cover
lines and sell lines than my magazine.
The college magazine that I have made
are short and snappy and there is less of
compared to Vogue.
The colour scheme on the magazines are both different. My college magazine contains a footer at the bottom of the
The colour scheme of my magazine is purple and white. front cover, whereas the front cover of Vogue does not
Vogue’s colour scheme is pink, orange and white. This can
be shown through the colour of cover lines and masthead.

4. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products? contents page
Initial of
magazine
masthead
Highlights
front cover
features.
Text layout
of ‘contents
Uses sub
headings to
help reader’
Layout out
of columns
for features
within the
magazine
and
categorised.

5. DIFFERENCES WITH CONTENTS PAGE
Vs VIBE
COLLEGE GUIDE
The choice of
contents within
the magazine,
adding a wider
range.
Using more then 1
image- my images
aren’t very good and
seem random. Vibe’s
1 main image looks
sexy and
professional. It also
looks more
sophisticated with the
subtle use of colour in
Vibe. The use of black
and white looks
elegant

6. What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this
product
ouble
o get a tures nts and d
Moodle t g the fe eate my conte
Using es. Learnin r
ign to c
resou
rc o f I n D es d .
r ea
page sp
.
se o s.
t o u op, t age
ow tosh te im
H o
cameras la
g digital Ph nipu
Usin nd type
, angle a ma
(shot
of shot).

7. Using the digital camera, i could ensure that My
image was an MCU which dominated the frame. I
also left space at the top for the masthead and I
observed the rule of thirds. Really I should have
moved the image more to the right so that the left
third had more space for cover lines. I told the
model to smile and look happy!
I use Adobe Photoshop
to make an ordinary
student into a “model”
for a college magazine.
This shows how I used Adobe to manipulate
my images, and one of my stages of
development. As you can see:
• I changed the levels of the colours, to add
more emphasis on the student. Originally she
had red eye which I corrected with the red eye
tool. I made sure everything looked perfect.
•I also added font with drop shadow and
effects to make the magazine more eye
catching. I added the blue flash to attract the
audience even more. I used the shape tool
option for this.

8. Using In-design For my Contents page
I had a main text box at the top
with the main title and I made
sure I used the same colours as I did think about layout, but I should have
on the front cover manipulated the images first of all in Photoshop. I
think it looks like a contents page but it would have
helped if I’d used the word “Contents”. I put picture
boxes in first all and then just placed my images.
Most of them didn’t fit so I had to resize them to the
frame. I think it looks a bit boring for my student
audience and I should have had different shape
boxes or at least rotated them or used some effects
(but I didn’t have time and I didn’t know how!)
I did use columns and I think I used text quite well. I
also experimented with colour to add variation. I
think Indesign was quite hard to use because I’ve
never thought about the design/layout of a page
before and this has helped me to understand how
important this is