Preliminary Task 2

14/12/12 update

In my media lesson on the 14th of December 2011, i had to make improvements to my work based on the feedback from my peers and teacher. Most of the feedback made me realised that i needed to make the text on my front cover visible and make a contents page becasue when i presented the front cover, i dint have my contents page with me. What I've done is i designed my contents page and while douing this i tried to keep a consistent house style keeping the same colours on my front cover and contents page.

12/12/11 Update

Last week I presented my preliminary task to my teacher and classmates. My teacher and classmates analysed my cover for the preliminary task and below are the results from my classmates as my teacher's report was put on my report and I got feedback from my classmates to update it on to my blogg and develop from where i went wrong on my preliminary task.

My classmates mentioned that:

• Magazine cover was good and near professional quality
• I used good colours and kept a consistent house style
• Good simplistic layout
• Target audience easily identified
• My magazine cover was different from the type of genres my classmates made (most of them were post 16 magazine cover and mine was a music school magazine cover)
• The test on the cover was not visible and one of my classmates suggested that i add a black stroke to the text to make it visible.
• There was a bit of much empty space on my cover.

On the day of the presentation, i had forgotten my usb memory stick which had my front cover and contents page so what I told the class and my teacher is that I would upload the finished front cover and the contents page.

Preliminary task 2

Media Studies for the past 2 weeks

The reason why my blog isn't up to date is because I've been missing lessons due to clashes and what I know so far is that we are designing a school magazine front cover which I've done and will be up soon. If any on my class mates read this blog could you comment and fill me in on what I've been missing as its important.

Preliminary task

This week I've been researching and designing my own school magazine using Adobe In Design. I have no experience in using this programme so the standard won't be that high but i was willing to try and adjust to using this programme and Mr Wallis, a teacher from my school just taught me through the basics of this programme. He taught me how to fit images, stroke text's (outline) etc. Above is my design for a magazine i called Schools Illustrated and you can see how much I've learnt and having missed some lessons due to clashes on my timetable.

Magazine research

• Sports Illustrated is a sports magazine and falls under the sport category and is comes out in weekly issues and roughly 3,000,000 copies weekly. The publisher is Frank Wall and the first issue was on the 16th of August 1954 and the magazine is still up, running and releasing their weekly issues and its based in New York, USA.
• Sports Illustrated's purpose is simple, to sell magazines. Selling magazines doesn't necessarily mean its all about making money, selling magazines can also be used to update info on not only its customers, but it's sponsors etc. 
• I think the target audience are sports fans or anyone interested or has anything to do with sports, from fans to the pro athletes and coaches themselves. Its effective because sports illustrated doesn't just cover one sport, it covers all major sports and and little rising issues in the world of sport, e.g cover basketball, baseball, football, tennis, netball and many more sports (Unfortunately I could not retrieve an image on the internet of a sports illustrated contents page)
• The focus of the cover above is Michael Jordan and his entry into the Hall of Fame and the end of his career. You can tell this from the title "Jordan celebrating a hall of fame career" The word "Jordan" is type up in capitals and is the biggest word on the page because its emphasising on how much of a big star he was during his career. The image is a bird's eye view camera shot of Michael about to dunk a basketball. I think they chose this image because Michael was well known from a famous dunk he performed in a slam dunk contest and he jumped from 13 feet away from the basket and successfully dunked the basketball and that's why I think they chose that image, Michael was also a high-flyer and this means means he jumped high and was a good dunker.
• I think the magazine is effective in putting its message across, the cover story gives a brief profile of what to expect in the full story. This simple design shows a lot and it was about the overview of Michael Jordan's career and I think the bird's eye camera shot emphasised on that. What I've learnt from this cover is how to emphasise what your cover story is about in different ways e.g. camera shots, placing of of image, text size etc. 

Women magazine design and research

The image above is my magazine front cover which is targeted at women. For this task I had to design a magazine front cover for the magazine "Read Me" and This is the final product. In my research I learnt that most Women magazines are very simple and usually have a big title at the top and ita usually the magazine name then heading, subheading and other text are placed elsewhere on the cover. I also found out the colour pallets they use usually have 3 colours or less because it adds to that that simple effect. The top selling magazines have like Vogue and Glamour go that extra mile and they are the the top selling magazines because:

1.They usually have celebrities on their front covers

2. Catchy headings that have to do with gossip,sex etc.

3. Competitions draw many customers and research shows that 65% of women would rather buy a magazine which has competitions once in a while.

Below are some of the magazines I based my research and tried to generate ideas from these ideas.