My School Magazine Evaluation

Front Cover
1. Colour Scheme. 2. Smaller font under title of magazine.
3. Picture of person takes up bottom two thirds.
4. Magazine title takes up top third.
5. Black and blue font stand out from low opacity back ground. (school colours)
6. School logo in bottom corner.
7. Bold blue top on girl.

For my magazine front cover I decided to use a blue colour scheme to connect with the school colours and keep it neutral to make the image of the girl stand out. I used the smaller font under the title of the magazine to make the word students stand out and make it appealing to the student forum. By using blue for the smaller font it connects with the school colours and makes it more attractive to all at the school. The picture of the girl takes up the whole bottom two thirds of the front cover which makes the student the center of attention; which is what I was aiming for. Furthermore the magazine title takes up the top third, by doing so it attracts the reader to the main focus of the magazine. I chose a low opacity background to make the black and blue font stand out from the school building and this made my front cover look a little more professional and better thought out. I chose to put the school logo in the bottom corner to show that Whitley Bay high school was the school magazine i was making. On the other hand by making the girl wear a blue hoody it links well with the school colours and makes the girl connect with the scheme of the front cover.
By using the inspiring ideas from school magazines like fusion it allowed me to understand that there is normally a plain 3 colour scheme; so the reader can read and understand each section of the front cover with ease. Also researching into the school magazines names and font size I realised that most of them have titles that take up the whole top third, as a way of making the readers eyes focus on that before anything else.

Contents Page
1. Black and white computer in background.
2. Used only 3 colours (blue, red and black)
3. Diagonal photos in bottom third.(in colour)
4. The contents title takes up top third.
5. Plain white background.
6. Italic red font as sub heading under Stress Advice.

Studying my contents page I made the decision to make the computer take up the right 2 thirds of the contents page and also made it black and white. Doing so allowed the other colour images to stand out and give a variety of media techniques in my contents page. I also decided to make the computer have a low opacity allowing the readers eyes to be mainly focused on the page headings and the colour images at the bottom third of the page.
By only using three colours it adds a sense of professional touch to the contents and doesn't detract the readers eyes away from the main contents headings on this page.
I added diagonal colour images in the bottom third to give it a additional bit of creativity, the images also show pieces of artwork younger students have produced and them in the middle of creating new pieces of artwork; this gives the reader a image of how the school is as a whole.
The title 'contents' takes up the top third of the contents page making the readers eyes attracted to the title before looking at the images.
Furthermore the plain white background makes the blue font, black and white computer and the colour images at the bottom of the page stand out instead of it being discussed in the background. While looking at examples of school magazines I noticed they added sub-headings under the contents number titles. I decided to add this into my contents and used a red font to make it stand out from the blue and the black tones from the other writing on the same page. This worked out to be very effective and could be used in my future projects.

While researching some alternative school magazines contents pages I realised that they mainly have quite plain coloured backgrounds; this technique was used so the text could be read easily and was more eye catching. While looking at some other basic school magazines I saw that most of them had images representing different sections in the magazine, almost like a little peak into what was going to feature in the school magazine.

What I have learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product

While using the camera I had quite a tough job getting the aperture and shutter speed at the correct setting, this sometimes made my photos quite blurry and not as sharp as I wanted. Furthermore taking the medium close up shot wasn't a great deal of work. The natural light coming through the window to the left of my model was a prefect contrasting brightness, showing the harsh shadows and giving my model a nice glow. After taking the photo I went into Photoshop and adjusted the hue and brightness/contrast just to add a little more colour to my models hands and face.
While constructing my front cover and contents page on Photoshop I took into account the rule of thirds and tried to lay my images and text in the same way to give it that professional edge. I used the magnetic lasso to give me a nice smooth edge around my models body so it looked like she was sitting inside the magazine. I also used tools such as the text tool for my font sizes/font and for writing out text. This tool was very good for creating a correlating colour scheme of blue, black and white; to match the school colours.
On the other hand my main tool for constructing my school magazine was the layering. By using this it allowed me to move around certain parts of the front cover/contents if I wasn't happy with were they were. If I didn't layer my magazine I wouldn't be able to move around any of my images as easily because they would all  be compressed into one. Layering was a great way of structuring ideas but then being able to move them around if I wasn't happy with certain aspects of my school magazine.