School Magazine Evaulation

I used Photoshop and Publisher to produce a front page and contents page for a school magazine, with a featuring Photoshop of a student in medium close up plus some appropriately laid out text and a masthead.

Before I created my magazine I did some research, looking at existing magazines, and searching the internet. I found out the average dimensions of a magazine, which do vary. So I did my magazine about the same size, my magazine is 21.75 by 29. I also have a masthead, which is my magazine name, ‘weekly rumour’. There is a main picture which is a convention of a magazine. My mid-shot photo is a posed picture which give the magazine a friendlier tone because she is side on and she is smiling so it makes the reader feel welcome. My colour scheme is quite basic on the front cover I have used greens and blue to contrast with the orange jumper my person is wearing. On the contents page my colours are also basic and I have tried to stick to the school colour, green, red and yellow. I have challenged the conventions of a magazine because sometimes the photo is turned to the left not turning towards the cover which would encourage the reader to open the front cover.

The target audience is from year 7-13’s, and it also is aimed at teachers. The front cover of my magazine represents its audience, because the age of the girl in the 17, which relates to there age group, so they would feel more connected. The colours are quite bright, bold and lively which would make them feel intrigued and not find it boring. The main topics in the magazine wouldn’t directly appeal to the teenagers, but they would care about the topics because it’s to do with school, but because it’s a school magazine its restricted how much the topics can appeal to the target audience. The magazine also appeals to teachers mainly because its about there school, and most average teachers care and want to find out what is going on in there school. The final page is also directed at teachers, as its something for them to refer to if they ever need to find out term dates.

I hadn’t used Photoshop at all before, so I found the first week of practising and learning about it very useful as I learnt the basics. The first time I cut a picture out it took quite a while as I couldn’t use the tool properly and the cutting out was very uneven. Then the second time I used it I found it much easier having learnt the basics, and I had a much better understanding of Photoshop. For my contents page I used Microsoft publisher, which I found much easier than Photoshop, as I had used it before so knew the basic techniques. Therefore the contents page was much quicker to produce than the front cover.

I could improve my front cover by, spending more time on it, therefore doing more research about the target audience and existing magazines. I could also put my picture on a different background, for example I could have put it onto an image of the one of the London West end theatres and it would relate and emphasis my main article. I could have added more feature articles and pictures onto my front cover, to make the page seem more appealing and busy. To improve my contents page I could have added pictures which related to my magazine topics in the contents, for example I could have added a picture of Mr Ayling and put it next to the Mr Ayling Top Ten Exam tips. All this would have made my magazine more interesting to look at, and appealing.