Preliminary task evaluation

The preliminary task is a music magazine created using DTP and an image manipulation program, using these skills I’ve managed to create a front cover featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up with some laid-out text with a masthead and a contents page.

Before creating the preliminary task I’ve sketched out a rough layout of how I wanted my school magazine to look like. Sketching out my magazine facilitated the creation of the task as I was following it step by step and I knew exactly what I was doing; however, some details were not included, such as the double page spread for the contents page and the school logo.

To create the magazine, I used InDesign; when creating the task, I was thinking about fonts, colour scheme, the size of the text and pictures. I’ve chosen an important and smart font for the masthead to represent the “Haydon School Sixth Form’’ detonating that Haydon it’s an important and high achieving school. “Haydon” it’s the biggest text to literally detonate the gigantic size of the school and to connote the importance and big influence that it has on the students. The remaining of the masthead it’s written in smaller characters as it’s less important than the name of the school, moreover “sixth form edition” it’s the smallest out of the three lines due to not being a permanent feature of the magazine, but instead it changes each time depending on the different type of edition. “Form” it’s in a different colour to make it stand out and instantly make the reader understand that it’s a different edition.

The sell lines were one of the hardest details to create, it was difficult to think about creative and interesting information to make the reader want to read on. I’ve balanced the sell lines so that they were not cramped all on one side of the page,

and at the same time I used a different font to make the magazine appear modern to the targeted audience. From doing this I’ve learned that to make the magazine look more professional I have to make sure that all of the words can be read, instead due to the colour of the font and the main photograph it’s hard to read in certain places, for this I will have to assure that next time the colour of the font will have to stand out.

The background picture is a mid-shot of a current sixth form student, this was done as the magazine is a sixth form edition and therefore that’s why I chose my model to be a student. Moreover, by choosing a student which looks confident, happy and calm, this will reassure he sixth form students and parents that Haydon is doing a great job at taking care of its students. Lastly behind the model there are the Haydon Values which are very important and every student should be aware of them, by choosing this background it’s clear that it is a school magazine and it also shows the logo of the school connoting that this is the official Haydon school magazine and that it’s a well-known school.

Lastly the front page it’s made up of other small details such as a QR code where the students and readers can scan and instantly be directed to the official website of the school if they need help or support.

The contents page it’s the second page that I’ve created. This page gives information about what the magazine will feature and directions to where the different articles can be found. In my contents page I’ve included two separate headings “features” and “on the cover” where the different articles with the page numbers can be found. To keep with the same theme, I’ve used the same fonts that I’ve used in my front cover so that it will look professional. As a background I’ve used a full bleed which is a picture of Haydon school, this

however didn’t work out very well as it makes the text hard to read. I’ve included some pictures of the different things that can be found in the school and social media; this is an alternative fun way in which students can interact and be part of the school and lastly the school website can be found at the bottom so that people can get in touch with the school at any time.

Over all I’m fairly happy with how my magazine turned out as I’ve included all the main details and features that a magazine should have. However, there’s a lot of improvement that can be made for my future project. Firstly, I will have to choose and stick with a colour scheme through the entire magazine and then I have to make sure that my contents page will be a double spread as it will withhold more information and it will look more professional.