Preliminary evaluation

I had to put this up late as I had technical difficulties.

To create my front cover and contents page for the school magazine, I have used certain codes and conventions. I made a list of these codes and conventions at the start of the task and referred to them throughout.

Firstly, I had to decide what I was going to call my magazine, details of the mise en scene for the cover and slo, I had to create the coverlines for the front cover.
I chose to call the magazine 'WHS' as it is an abbreviation of the school name and school magazines usually involve the school name in the title. I then decided that the settings and mise en scenehad to be strongly linked with the school and therefore, only took pictures in school.
The coverlines that I came up with are as follows; 'Ties, time for a change?', 'Ice radio goes live!', 'Win:iPhone', 'BOTB-Who's your winner?', 'Common Room Blues', 'Exclusive with Mr Dyment!'. I chose to do six as the codes and conventions stated that the average is 6-10.

Secondly, I had to produce a rough sketch of my front cover and contents page which I would refer to throughout. I then scanned these and uploaded them to my blog. I ended up re-arranging a few things that I had sketched when I actually started to produce the front cover and contents page.

After I had created my sketches, I had to come up with a list of the regular content which would appear in my school magazine. I chose to include 'Ask the teacher', which is sort of like an agony aunt feature, 'Ice Radio Playlist' which is a playlist that has been used over the week on the school radio show, 'Win' where pupils can enter a competition to win, 'Poll of the month' where students' feelings about different topics are polled, 'Picture Gallery' where pictures from the week are printed and 'Letters' where students can voice their opinions on certain topics.

I also had to create feature articles, which were my 6 coverlines and also; 'How to de-stress', 'So, how do teachers think?', 'Get organised, Get results', 'Higher ed:What's it all about', 'Be active' and 'Behind the scenes: Staff Stars in their Eyes'.
Then I had to decide what images I wanted to use on my front cover and take them. I took a picture of a pupil holding her tie and looking disgusted to go with the coverline 'Ties, time for a change?', I also took a picture of a drumkit and bass to go with the coverline 'BOTB: Who's your winner?', A picture of 2 students in the recording studio for the coverline 'Ice radio goes live!' and a picture of the common room looking messy and using a tilt shot to add to the effect for the coverline 'Common Room Blues'.

I then had to edit the pictures that I had taken so that they would fit on the front cover. I did not manipulate the image of the common room as it did not look right cut so I had to keep it as a square image. I cut round the students in the common room but left one straight edge which I put on the edge of the frontcover so that it fit well. My main image was cut out completely and I put it against a gradient. I also, put a shadow underneath all of the images so that they stood out and I also put a glow around the main image.

I then completely produced my front cover and contents page, the colour scheme was limited and was navy blue, purple and pink to match the school colour scheme. I changed my font quite alot to make the cover look busy and attractive, however I did not change the font much atall on my contents page as I wanted that to look organised. I also used some shapes to place behind my text if there wasn't an image to go with the text and this helped make the cover look more busy and interesting.

Overall, I think I did well with my preliminary task, however, if I was going to do it again I would try and stick to my sketches and organise the work abit more.