Friday, 2 October 2009

Preliminary Exercise - Evaluation

Evaluation

The aim of the task was to create a front cover and contents page for a school magazine.
To help develop my ideas I began looking at a variety of other magazines, and listed the general codes and conventions of magazine front covers and contents pages; this was useful in helping me come up with my own ideas for the task.
I created the front cover using Adobe Photoshop which I have already used in previous work, and the main image used on the cover is a medium close up of a school student; this was compulsory and the task stated that a medium close up had to be used. For the contents page I used a programme which is used by professional journalists, called QuarkXPress Passport. I have not used this programme before but found it to be very useful in my work, as it was easy to use and gave the contents page a professional look by situating text and pictures into a column structure.
The product created does not really deviate from any of the general codes and conventions of a magazine and mainly follows the basic outline. The title on the front cover contains a unique font and a masthead is also used; the main cover line anchors the meaning of the main image, and around 6 sub cover lines are also used to show inside content of the magazine. The front cover also follows the general codes and conventions by displaying a bar code, issue number, date and price, and the contents page also sticks to a 3 column structure which is used in most magazines. From completing the product I would say that my strengths were shown most when working on the contents page using QuarkXPress, as although I have previously used Adobe Photoshop, I found that the package was really simple and straightforward to use, and also think that my contents page looks more professional. I liked being more creative when working on the front cover, and feel that my skills have developed when working with Photoshop.

Preliminary Exercise - Finished Work



Finished Product






























Preliminary Exercise - Production Images

Production

































Image used on Contents page





















































Image used on Contents page























































Image used on Contents page (larger picture)






































































Image used on Contents page













































































Image used on Contents page




























Main Image used
on Front Cover