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
Consistent
Colour
Theme

3. Front cover - Differences
The marie claire front cover contains a date on the top of The positioning of the masthead is both different on marie claire
the masthead alongside a sell line of the magazine. my and my college magazine. The marie claire masthead fills the
college magazine does not contain this. top quarter of the magazine. My masthead is 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 have a footer. This is because the main cover line takes up
be shown through the colour of cover lines and masthead. this space on the page.

4. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products? contents page
Contents
Images
Features
Page Numbers
Masthead

5. Contents Page - Differences
The colour of the background is different on both my The colours of the marie claire contents page are very simple
college magazine contents page and marie claire compared to the colours on my college magazine. The house
contents page. The purple relates to the colours of the colours are used much more subtly but are more effective then
college. the colours that I have used.
The layout of both SFC Solihull college
magazine and marie claire contents page.
There is a large amount of ‘dead space’
on the background of my magazine. this
could have been used more wisely like
marie claire’s contents page.
The images on the contents pages are
used in a more subtle way compared to
my college magazine. the layout of where
the images are placed on marie claire are
easier on the eye as they blend into the
whole background.
The name of the magazine can be found at the bottom of the marie claire contents page whereas there is not at the bottom of my
contents page.

6. What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this
product?
Throughout creating my college magazine front cover and contents page I have learnt about a
variety of technologies. I have been able to use a digital camera to capture the specific images that
I wanted to use for my magazine. I have been able to adjust the shot size and angle to create a
specific type of shot. As the outline of the magazine was to create a MCU of a student, I began to
use this as a brief. As well as taking MCU images I was able to take pictures of students from long
shots.
With these images I was then able to manipulate the images on Photoshop. On Photoshop I was
able to change the levels of the images and then the brightness and contrast of them. After
developing more skills into Photoshop I was then able to blur the background of my cover image by
using the magnetic tool to frame the lad before blurring.
After creating the front cover I then Indesign to layout the contents page. The Indesign format gave
me the skills to adapt my work to a further level.
.

7. What have you learnt about the
technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
I used a digital camera to take the image of the lad on the
front cover of the magazine. The design brief was to take
an image that was an MCU of a student. I made sure when
. I took the picture that I kept it within the rule of thirds. This
meant that I took the image with the lad slightly to the right
of the camera so the main cover lines can fit in the left
hand side of the magazine without covering the image.
Another reason why I kept the image to the right of the
frame was because I knew previous to taking the image
that I was going to have a square masthead that would be
placed in the top right hand corner, therefore I do not want
to cover the image with the masthead.
I then used Adobe Photoshop CS6 to edit and manipulate the images that I had taken for both the
front and contents page. I firstly edited the levels of the images. This created a shaper image and
also changed the brightness. However I did not believe that the image was quite right so I edited the
image more by adjusting the contrast and brightness levels (this can be shown on the stages of
development on my blog). A big disadvantage of my image was the busy background as the image
was taken outside and not by a white wall. This meant that I was able to on Photoshop and blur out
the background of the image to create a less busy background. I completed this by using the
magnetic tool. I then cropped and moved the image to create the frame I wanted to create.

8. Using In-design For my Contents page
To create the words “contents” I first of all added the
word “contents” to a text box. I then changed the
colour of the text to green. I chose green because
green is one of the college colours. Another reason
for choosing green was that the green stands out
against the purple and white. However as the
contents page shows there is too much purple. After
changing the colour of the text I added a drop
shadow to create a less flat visual.
The images were edited and manipulated on
Photoshop. However when added to the contents
page I created a drop shadow on the background to,
like the text “contents”, to create a less flat visual. I
then added text to the image on InDesign to show
that the images have a meaning and to relate them
to the magazine.
The features at the top of each section, section off
the sections of the magazine and separate them into
specific page numbers. The way I have laid out the
contents page has created a lot of dead space
which could have been used more wisely, for
example through a editors letter.