Preliminary Task: School/College Magazine

To prepare myself for the music magazine and to get an idea of the timescale and the amount of preparation I need to construct a magazine, I did a small, preliminary task of designing a school magazine.

First of all, I looked at several other school magazines to analyse some similiarities and differences between the magazines of this particular type. By looking at several school magazine, I came up with a list of codes and conventions:

Image from:
http://havocduckducksplat.blogspot.com/
2009/10/college-magazine-analysis.html

• Clear, readable text

• Specific and relevant colour scheme

• Logo of school or college

• Clear, structured layout

• Sophisticated style

• Informative and motivational

• Formal/respectful

• Good, high quality images

• Interesting/eye-catching images – visually appealing

• Interesting writing style

• Relevant topics appropriate for audience

• Inviting and engaging

• Contributions from all ages so that it appeals to all years

• Engaging achorage and cover lines

• Information on dates/events

• Career/homework/coursework advice and tips

• GCSE, A-Level, University options

• Simple, clear font with appropriate font sizes

• Not discriminative of any type of student

I then carried out an audience research questionnaire which I asked several people in my target age range to complete. Here are the results:

 

So, after having done the research into code and conventions and the audience research, I decided to starting planning and drafting my own front cover for the school magazine. After doing pencil sketches and several drafts, here is the final version:

 

I also did a rough draft of a contents page:

 

After carrying out the research and constructing some pages, for the preliminary task, I think I'm more confident and ready to start on the music magazine :)