Contents Page Plan

With my front cover finished I was able to quickly move on to my contents page, and here's the plan for it:



This is quite a basic plan, it includes the contents of the magazine listed, the name of the magazine, a clear version of the cover image, the school ethos and pictures relavent to the school.

So now I have completed my preliminary task. The next task I'm going to do is my semiotic analysis of three music magazines.

School Magazine Front Cover

This is the final product that I have come up with.

I named the magazine 'Lucidity' because the definition of that word is rational, easily understood, and is associated with clarity. I thought it would be a good choice because it's not a word commonly used in general converation and it puts across that this magazine is to give people some basic information in a clear way and is not meant to be overwhelming.

When designing the headlines I found this colour wheel extremely useful.

The background image has a lot of colours in it, so I used this to help me make each headline as clear as possible without covering up the cover model. The colours ended up having an autumn-like theme, which was a good thing because I had intended for this to be September magazine to start the school year. I hadn't quite realised how difficult colours are to get right; I don't think I got it quite right in this situation but I think I'm thinking along the right lines, to improve this cover the colours of the coverlines would need to be more consistent and have more of an overall theme, and the struggle I had with the colours highlighted the fact that I could have made it easier for myself by taking the photo of my model against a lighter background.

I think that overall this is quite similar to my plan, but there were somethings that just didn't work and had to be moved around. For example, I wanted to add another image in the top right corner with it's own headline, but it made the page look far too busy. I was also going to have both puffs opposite each other, but I noticed that it brought the eye to the bottom of the page and made it look too light and empty at the top.

School Magazine Cover Photos

The main thing that I think goes into a magazine cover is the image, it's always in the centre of the publication and the first thing the eye lands on, so it's important to try and get it right. I took a few pictures of a sixth form girl at my school to use for my cover.

The image has to be a mid-shot and I have to allow room for the masthead and some coverlines so that they do not overlap the image too much. I initially like number 29, but I think that the angle is a little bit too high, and I think I'm going to rule out all the images where her legs are in the shot, which is the majority of them. I think that the one I am most likely to use is number 27.

I think this one is good because it leaves enough room for the masthead and the background, though in focus, is not too distracting.

Mock-up Front Cover of School Magazine

Taking the real school magazine into account, I created a basic plan to create my own.

To create this I used some typical conventions used by the media, for example having puffs on the cover and making coverlines to make people want to read the publication, but I did not use a barcode or make space for a price as I know that this not a magazine that will be sold. 

School Magazine Cover Annotation

Here is my annotation of a real school magazine. It has some key differences to a magazine that sold to the public, for example you will notice that is has no barcode or price, because school magazines tend to be handed out to students or sent out to parents of students rather than sold. It has no issue number, which may only apply to this particular magazine as other issues are implied in the puff saying 'summer edition'.