Preliminary Task - Introduction

Today we were introduced to our preliminary task. We were told that we were to design the front cover and the contents page for a school magazine. We looked in detail at the areas we will need to study before we start. We discussed target audience, images, languages, contents, attracting the audience and logo's and linked each sector to what would be suitable for a school prospectus.

We then covered "using the image," "the power of words" and "words and picture," learning how we could effectively use them to benefit and improve our work.

After this we were shown examples of the previous years' work. The class conferred their thoughts on the style, images and the overall look of the magazine cover. This gave us an insight into what we were expected to achieve from our school prospectus and allowed us to review and plan with a better understanding of our task.

We were then set the task of venturing around the school and finding images which we thought would be suitable for the cover and contents page of a school magazine. After analysing the previous years work, it was clear that the images used played a major part in targeting and appealing to its particular audience. The representation of the school and therefore the magazine is justified by the images shown.

I decided that I would take photogrpahs that would showcase the schools beneficial appliances and attributes. I thought this would be a good way of showing the readers the advantages the school has to offer. I also wanted images of the students to be shown consistently in my magazine. I felt this would appeal to the audience as well as giving the students the opportunity to get involved with the project.

To distinguish the St. Marks brand I want to use the the logo and colour scheme which the school has become to familiarise itself with. The main colour I will apply will be the maroon which is common among the logo and our school's prospectus. This will immediately clarify what the magazine is about as it will be easily recognisable.

I will diversify the camera angles and lighting effects used for the images so that each image is different and therefore more prominent and contrastable against eachother. I hope that this will allow the magazine to appear more interesting and eye catching.

The main title will be big, bold and bright so that it can stand out and grab the attention of the reader. I will place the title at the top of the page so that it is clear and obvious. Other text on the page will be placed as captions to explain the mening behind the photographs. This text will also be explaining the content of the magazine and what is to be expected inside. The text will also be maroon athis will combine the overall look of the cover page.

The aim over the cover is to persuade and inform. I hope to achieve this by actively amalgamating the use of images and the use of words equally so as to not overcrowd the cover and to also keep a balance between the two aspects.

The aim of the contents page is primarily to inform the reader, however it still needs to include aspects of persuasion and so I will hope to accomplish this by including catchy headlines and images.

I have drawn up a plan of what I hope the finished product will look like. This will give me an idea of how to lay out and design my magazine cover and contents page. This also gave me the chance to go through trial and error designs and come up the one which I felt most suitable.

Here are my plans: