Preliminary Task Evaluation

I used the software ‘InDesign’ to produce my preliminary magazine front cover and contents page. When planning my magazine, I had to decide on a colour scheme to make my magazine look consistent and professional - I chose the colour scheme of light blue, black and burgundy. I chose these colours as they stood out against my background, they complement each other nicely and would attract students to buy the magazine.

Then, I got a mid-close up photograph of a girl in year seven to put as the background of my front cover. I chose to have a photograph as my background instead of a solid colour so that it doesn’t look out of place and I could write text on top of the photograph to advertise my magazine to customers. For the contents page I chose to take a photograph of St. Nicks building and set it to the background picture. I then added page numbers and what they would consist of, I made the font colour black so it would clearly stand out against the white building. I also added in the Haydon stag as it is the school logo which keeps to the theme of making a school magazine, this makes my magazine look more personalised to the school.

I then had to think about what people from Haydon School would like to see in this magazine, to do this I thought about what I personally would like to see and what some of the younger years would like also, next I had to decide what text I was going to write upon my front cover to ‘sell’ the magazine. I advertised the different features and articles that would be in the magazine – I made this appealing on the front cover by adding colour to the text and text boxes.

 

The things that I like about my magazine is the way that I layed out my contents text as it is on top of the picture of the building, almost giving the impression that the text is written on the building. I also like my front page title as it ties in both words “Haydon” and “news” by having a larger font size ‘N’ between both words and in the different colour of blue contrasting to the rest of the black title. I think that this made the magazine more original and attractive. I believe that my preliminary task has met the criteria as it is a school magazine, includes pictures and a mid-close up shot of a student.

When it comes to the real task, I will use the skills that I have learnt throughout doing the preliminary task to ensure that my magazine meets the expected criteria; I could also use some ideas generated in this task to use in the real task.