Overall evaluation

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

First of all I looked at the codes and conventions of magazines, then I planned out and picked what my title would be to my magazine. For this I chose ‘Love School’. For the front cover I used one main image, this was of a school pupil with the camera shot of ‘close up’. Then for my contents page I used two other images both related to school and the coverlines of which was inside the magazine. I used up to 10 coverlines including regular and features. The colour scheme I chose was consistent and followed the codes and conventions of a magazine front cover and contents page. These were all ways in which a magazine should be all because I followed the codes and conventions.

USING TECHNOLOGY

Strengths of technology

To do my preliminary task I picked up a lot on my media skills, to design and plan my magazine I was using a lot of technology that I had never used before such as prezi, QuarkXPress and setting up accounts on various websites. I found this quite easy to grasp and it helped me a lot with my work. Prezi taught me that I could make my presentations a lot more interesting to viewers as it looked much more fun. Things such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Photoshop were easy as I had used them before and they are very straight forward.

Weaknesses of technology

However I found that using quarkxpress was quite hard and confusing at times because I had never used it before and therefore not as familiar with it as the others. Because I found it difficult to use this meant that work took a lot longer to produce and wasn’t always completed in time as I was trying to grasp it still.

MEDIA EVALUATION

The strengths of my front cover

I think the strengths of my front cover was the main image and title that I chose to go onto it, the image was of a pupil smiling which related to the main headline of the magazine. This headline was about the ‘pupil of the week’ who was smiling which connoted that she loves school anchoring the title of the magazine..’Love school’. The title was the main strength because I believed that it would interest readers and turn education into a positive thought opposed to negative and therefore went perfectly with the concept of the magazine.

The weaknesses of my front cover

The weaknesses of my magazine front cover are the fact there is no date, price or barcode on it. This will always appear on a real magazine and therefore a downfall on my magazine as this doesn't follow the codes and conventions of a magazine front cover. As well as this the layout of the front cover could have been better, it looks a bit thrown together and not very professional.

The strengths of my contents page

The strengths of my contents page is mainly the layout of the columns and the text written in it, I believe that I took a lot of time and effort to produce a professional-looking contents page. The colour scheme was kept consistent with the front cover and therefore looked even more professional. I followed the codes and conventions of magazine contents pages and kept to a maximum of 4 colours.

The weaknesses of my contents page

The only weakness of my contents page are the images I put onto it, I only inserted two therefore I did not follow the codes and conventions of a magazine contents page properly as there is usually four or more pictures. If I had added more pictures I believe my contents page would be a lot better.

Magazine cover

This is my final image for my new school magazine cover.

Photographs for school magazine

These are the pictures I took for my magazine, one of them was cropped and manipulated for my front cover image and the two others went onto my contents page.

Contents page

This is my overall finished contents page for my new school magazine.

Planning content

PLANNING CONTENT

-First of all I had to write a list of regular content which will appear in my new school magazine,  this was the coverlines I had previously chosen which would be appearing every week.

-After that I had to write a list of feature articles which were one-off articles. I had previously decided on these and just had to add them into my content.

-Finally I had to decide on images that I wanted to be on my contents page, for this I again looked at things related to school and came up with using a school logo, pictures of teachers and pupils.

-For this plan I drew it all down onto a piece of A4 paper so I had a rough idea what it would look like.

-I annotated the codes and conventions of a contents page of a magazine to show me what mine should look like.

After the plan was made and I was happy with the results I then went onto quarkexpress and designed my contents page.

Front cover plan

You need to come up with :
- Title for your new school magazine
- Details of the mise en scene of your front cover image
- Coverlines for the front cover of your magazine

First of all I had to come up with a title for my front cover, I made a spider diagram with the word 'school' in the middle of the page. I then jotted down around it all the words I related to school to give me a possible idea for my title. I then decided on using the title 'Love School' as I thought it would be appropriate for the genre.

My next step was having to find the mise-en-scene of the front cover image. For this I also designed a spider diagram and put down ideas as well as looking at other magazine covers and got ideas from them. Overall I decided that using a pupil of the school would relate to the magazine and so settled on having a girl holding a folder up in the air with a smile on her face connoting that she 'loves school' which anchors the title of the magazine.

Lastly I had to come up with coverlines for my magazine, for this I thought about what schools have to offer and things that may come up in other magazines to give me some rough ideas. I then noted all them down and looked through them to come to an overall decision of which ones would be best. I then came up with 10 coverlines related to school. A few examples of these are  'teacher of the week' 'pupil of the week' 'monthly famous author' 'FOOD FIGHT!?' and 'local braniacs'.

Camera shots

Codes and conventions of a magazine contents page from leilahstott

Codes and Conventions of a magazine front cover

Codes and Conventions of a magazine front cover on Prezi