Creating College Magazine Cover

Creating a College Magazine Cover

In todays lesson I have been using Photo Shop again to design and create a magazine cover for the college magazine. I started off by taking pictures in medium close up of one of my friends who is a student at the college and running for Student Council. From the pictures I took I chose this one to use as my magazine background. I opened Photo Shop and up loaded the image, I then tried different ways of using the image as my background. Once I had my final background I then added the title of the magazine which is called 'Zine'. With this title I tried different colours and fonts and I decided on a dark blue colour as the background is a light blue and I wanted to keep a colour theme. After adding the title I then added subheadings and a headline. The headline was called 'Mike gives us his reasons why he should be Student Presendent'. I chose this headline as it is relevent to what is going on at college at the moment, so therefore will attract readers. A subheading I included was called '10 Top Revision Tips to ensure you get the best result this year'. I did this heading in blue and white, blue for the main part of the heading to catch attention. Another piece of text I added was the magazines slowgen or catch phase, this was 'The best magazine for the lattest College News'. I thought this was a good slowgen to use for thw magazine as it sums up what the whole magazine is about. Next lesson I am going to finish my design and hand it in to my teacher. With the feed back I am going to see how I can improve my work for my music magazine cover.

Alicia Pearce

Using Photoshop

Today I have been learing how to use Photoshop for the first time. My teacher gave me a booklet of instructions of what to do. I logged on to the computer and started by exploring all the different areas, like what the different icons are used for. In the booklet there were some tasks to do so i started by doing them. One of the tasks was to create a background image as if it was for a magazine. I recieved a image from the interenet and tried different ways of presenting the image, like different colours and different postitions on the page.

Overall I thought using Photoshop was actually quite difficult. I started off just trying different things but after a while it became a little easier once I new what the icons were for. My aim for the next lesson is to be able to add text to my image to make it look a little more like a magazine cover.

Alicia Pearce - Questionnaire

Target Audience Questionnaire

This week I have also been developing a questionnaire to give out to my target audience. In order for my magazine to be successful I need to research my target audience and find out what they want. My questionnaire asks questions about the music they like and what music magazines they like. There are 10 questions on my questionnaire and I will give my questionnaire out to 15 people. When developing my questionnaire I did a first daft and I gave this out and then I improved it for the final copy. I will give my questionnaire out to my target audience which is males and females aged 16-18. With the results I get I will write them up and discuss the out come.

Alicia Pearce – Analysing Magazine Articles

Analysing Music Magazine Articles

This week I have been analysing music magazine articles. I have chosen to analyse 5 articles from different magazines, these magazines are Vibe, Top of the Pops, NME and Bliss. I have been analysing articles to find out how I need to construct my article and what I need to do to make it successful. For each of the 5 articles I annotated them by writing notes around the article. I commented on parts of the article, like why certain colours where used etc. Two of the articles I chose were interviews, these magazines were Top of the Pops and Bliss. The other three articles were reviews, these magazines were vibe and NME. All of the magazines have different moods to them like the way they are written and the subjects they talk about but all of them use the same methods to construct their articles. From analysing these articles I now have a good knowledge of how I should construct my article, like what colours to use and where to put the pictures and quotes.

Alicia Pearce - Analysing Magazine Covers

Analysing Music Magazine Covers

This week have been analysing music magazine covers to try and understand why there designed the way they are and what meanings there are behind the design. I have analysed 4 magazine covers so I have I wide range of different types of music. All 4 magazines are based on different types of music and give out different meanings. These magazines are Rolling Stones, Vibe, NME and Top of the Pops. I chose these 4 magazines because they are the most popular music magazines and they all had very eye catching images so therefore would be good to analyses. For each magazine I analysed the name, target audience, front cover, style of presentation and the mode of address. I explained what the designer had done and what effect they were trying to create, like making the reader stop and look at the magazine. From studying the covers carefully and in detail I have learnt that every image and text is carefully constructed to create an effect or meaning. Readers sometimes do not even notice the meaning being portrayed from a simple image or text. Analysing these covers has given me ideas about what I need to do to create the right effect I want. And also what I should do to get the readers interested to make my magazine successful.