Preliminary Task

• Learning Outcome:To produce a draft of the preliminary task paying close attention to audience, purpose and form.

Wednesday 11th September 2013

Task

• In groups students look at a range of school publications and make notes on audience, purpose and form. (Mr Barlow).

• What elements do you find in school publications? E.g. logo, target audience etc.

• Plan out your own school publications and undertake a variety of market research tasks

• Produce flat –plans, style sheets and a mood board.

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Conventions

Magazines, like any other media product, have conventions that they follow

Certain elements are common to almost all magazines regardless of their audience

It is the way these elements are presented to the audience that defines each magazine

You can break conventions down into those they are general and cover most magazines and those that are more specific to a genre.

For example, photographs appear in almost all magazines but the style of photograph changes depending on genre.

Text also appears in all magazines but the type and size of font will change depending on the demographic that the final product is aimed at.

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Who is this for?

The next 3 slides all contain the same elements of text and pictures

They have all been arranged with a specific target audience in mind

Look at the colour scheme and the overall layout of text

What the image depicts is not important

Can you define the demographic that they are aimed in terms of gender, age and taste in music? And why?

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Males aged 15-24 into rock/metal music

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IMPORTANT

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Either gender aged 35-50 into classical music

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Girls aged 12-15 into pop music

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Preliminary Task

• Task 1: Analyse 2 school publications e.g. choice of colour scheme, mastheads, taglines, audience, purpose. (Mr Barlow)

• Task 2: Create a flat plan for your front cover, contents page and create a Prezi/ PowerPoint explaining your choices and the effect.

• Task 3: Create a style sheet with your Mastheads/ colour scheme/ font choice etc and explain.

• Task 4: Upload a range of original photographs for your school publication e.g. girls studying, canteen, playing, sports etc.

• Task 5: Compose your final front cover for the school magazine- explain your choices using an evaluation tool e.g. voki?

• Task 6: Create your contents page for the school magazine.

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You need to create a mood board to get your ideas going before making your style sheet.

Creative Media Production 2011

Magazine Layout

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Example style sheet

This is a font the main body text will be written in.

BluesBluesBlues

Potential fonts for article headings

These are the types of images I will use. They are a mixture of live shots and high quality portraits

Colour scheme

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Style Sheet

A style sheet allows you to present your ideas for the key stylistic elements of your magazine quickly and simply.

It will help you organise your thoughts and ideas

It will allow others to see what you have planned

It will let you receive feedback on your magazine without having to make it

It should contain:

Examples of fonts you will use for your Masthead, cover lines and body copy

Examples of the kind of photography you will include – these can be found images for illustration purposes only

Examples of the colour scheme you expect to use in your magazine

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Flat plans

Flat plans are simple drawings of a page layout that show where the different text, picture and graphic elements will go on a page.

Flat plans give designers the chance to experiment with a wide variety of different layouts quickly and easily, before coming to a final decision on page layout.

They will allow you to experiment and try and find a layout you are happy with before going into production.

This helps to cut down on production time and leads to a product which has been clearly thought out.

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Flat plans

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Flat plans

From these simple first draft outlines you can then produce a more detailed plan which incorporates some example content

This will help to give you a better idea of how your page might look.

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Example Layout

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Article Heading

TextText

Text

Text

Information bar

www.bluesmag.co.uk www.bluesmag.co.uk

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Example Front Cover

Additional cover line

Additional cover line

Picture

Here is a basic layout for a front cover along with an example image

Main Sell line

Additional cover line

MASTHEAD

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Example Front Cover

Plaung live again

New releasesGigs

Peter GreenLightnin’ Hopkins

HistoryThe blues progression

Playing live again

Rory Gallagher

Plus:

This example brings together the basic layout with examples of fonts and pictures to make the front cover.

BLUES

Preliminary Task- Task 2

• Create a rough/ draft flat plan for your school magazine.

• Write notes (in your book/ on the back of the sheet) about your choices as you go along.

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Pitch

Your pitch should be a brief explanation of what your magazine will be like.

It should include:

A name

A target audience

A description of what music it will cover and how it will cover it (articles, reviews, news, interviews)

A description of the style of the magazine

Some idea of what your double page will feature

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Pitch

Pitch

Blues is a new magazine aimed at the mostly male 35 – 60 market. Readers are likely to be affluent white males with a settled family life.

It will cover all aspects of blues music from its roots right up to the present day. It will mix interviews of musicians and famous fans alongside pieces on the history of blues. It will also review new and re-release albums and cover other blues events and news.

It will be simple in style with pictures and text given breathing space and a greater emphasis on text backed up with limited but excellent photography.

The example double page spread will be an interview with John Lee Hooker, discussing his new album and tour. The interview will be supported with side bars giving a brief history and discography to fill new readers in on his past.

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Getting good marks

In order to gain high marks you must show that you have drafted a range of ideas. One single idea will not get high marks

You need to present your work clearly and neatly. Badly presented work will not get high marks

You need to make sure you manage you time well, so that you hit your deadlines and you produce a good range of work

Work on layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.

Care taken in the presentation of research and planning

Time management

Grading Criteria

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Over to you

Now it’s your turn to produce a pitch, a style sheet and a flat plan

Look at what you have found in your research and use it to inform and influence your design

Your project should have a clear progression from research to planning and then to production

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Pitching your idea

Your research so far should have given you a good idea of the conventions of your chosen genre.

Your audience research should have given you further information on what your demographic wants and expects.

You should have ideas about the key aspects of your magazine.

This week you will develop and formalise those ideas and use three different methods to present those ideas.

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Research for your magazine

• Step 1: Research your form e.g. magazine; genre e.g. Rap, Pop, Garage, Rock etc; audience e.g. teenage boys aged 16-19 years old; purpose e.g. to entertain/ inform.

• Step 2: Create a mood board of your ideas for your magazine.• Step 3: Create a style sheet using examples of different colour

schemes, different font types, images etc.• Step 4: Flat plans e.g. drawings of a page layout that show where

the different text, picture and graphic elements will go on a page. Step 5: Your pitch e.g. A name, A target audience, A description of what music it will cover and how it will cover it (articles, reviews, news, interviews), A description of the style of the magazine, Some idea of what your double page will feature.