Preliminary Task Evaluation

I looked at the Fusion magazine which caught my eye the most because of its use of conventions, there was the cool-looking background and image on the cover which caught my interest because of the special effects used, such as the image of the medium-shot person which is made an alternative colour with the repeated phrase ‘Words of Wisdom’ written on it, I had used this type of effect on my magazine. This convention, with the differently coloured image gives that techno feel to it, as well as the pose which suggests coolness.

The style model’s title is given a large size and particular font to catch the audience’s eye most to show the name of the magazine. It has a distorted effect to fit the slogan underneath it; I copied this type of technique to fit my slogan onto my magazine. The style model’s contents page is given a funky feel to it, because of the tape cassette pouring colour which would represent music, and the titles for each articles would have particular word class techniques such as alliteration or rhyme, e.g. ‘Snack attack’. I copied this by using titles such as ‘Photoshop Top Tips’, rhymes and catchy phrases can give a musical, hip-hop charm to the article and for the audience.

My magazine is supposed to give the school and its teachers, students and others a positive feel to it, by giving the title etc. an upbeat, fun and cool perspective. Most of the magazine is focussed on the students however, because other students, possibly the younger year, both male and female, are the main audience, and other students can often be considered more interesting in some people’s opinion, because if the magazine contained the slang of an energetic and charismatic student, this will keep audiences interested. The main images consist of some of the school students and the school, all showing a positive image, because if the school was presented negatively, the main audience would consider the magazine a pessimistic and boring one.

I aimed to get my magazine distributed by middle schools and this high school, because if the magazine is shown to the younger audience who are struggling to choose between certain high schools, this magazine can show them the positive parts of high school. Younger high school students can see articles of the sixth form and the activities and productions they participate in.

I tried attracting my audience by making my magazine cover and contents page as decorative as possible, with persuasive texts to inform and catch the eye of the reader. In the body of the image of the student, I used three words which can summarise the contents of the magazine to explain briefly what the audience will be able to read.

I learned many techniques in making a well presented magazine, such as how flash can help with lighting on a picture, and how to move pictures and adjust their settings, as well as putting particular images with other images, for example a student in a main hall into an outdoors area.
I constructed my magazine with gradients for the background; I managed to mix the image of a scrapbook with the gradients using the opacity in order to see them both clearly. I also learned how to distort images and texts to make them stand out and make the magazine as vivid as possible.