My Preliminary task involved creating a student magazine, involving research of other magazines and the creation of a new one. During my research on the current school magazines I realised that most were all trying to follow the crowd of being contemporary and modern. The problem I found was that students didn't really read them, which seemed a waste as they are essentially written by students. The program I used to create the cover and contents was Pages by Apple.
My idea is to focus on creating a magazine front cover and contents which would in part emulate a magazine students may buy. I took inspiration from popular magazines such as Cosmopolitan which has a very distinct front cover. The difference being that the cover includes a picture of a student within surroundings of a relevant article in the magazine. This way, students may be more inclined to read the magazine themselves.
Below is a very simple idea as to the layout I wanted to achieve:
Except for the bottom banner subheading, I wanted to create a conventional lifestyle magazine layout which students could naturally relate to.
Instead of the usual panic school magazines appear to have when having to work out what to include in the issue, I decided to be more specific with the content. Therefore, instead of just articles about students achievements and trips, useful information for University and news about parties could be more relevant for my target audience. This magazine would actually give students a real sense of journalism and freedom on what to write as opposed to the standard school magazine. The magazine is aimed at the students, who will both write and edit articles.
Names
Other names I could have used included
- School
- YSN (Your Student News)
- Voice
- Talk
- Study
I chose 'Outspoken' on the basis that it was slightly more controversial and relevant than the others, as well as being the most creative. 'Outspoken' is word which really describes many teenagers desires to be heard. My slogan is 'Your Student Magazine', giving readers a sense that the articles are written for them and by them.
Front Cover:
Masthead
I opted for 'Outspoken' to be in 'Hiragino Kaku Gothic StdN' font, which is clear, loud and modern. I think this font worked over 'Arial Black' and 'Charcoal CY' because it closely resembles lifestyle magazines and moves away from normal school magazines.
Subheadings
I tried to put subheadings of articles in key places that people tend to see first. As an example, the title 'Unveiling of the NEW All - Weather Pitch' has 'NEW' in bold in the exact spot people first see when they look at a magazine cover. The other font that is prominent on the cover is 'Didot', which is very clear and works well on lifestyle magazine front covers.
Bottom Subheading
For 'The Top 10 list of University's for...' heading I decided to emulate what I found frequent on school magazines. I used the shadow function which definitely splits the rest of the cover from the main section. I thought the use of the 'Didot' font was useful as it conveys a clear and tangible heading which should lead the reader into the magazine.
Main Image
I liked the cover image as the background was blurred and the picture of Simon is stereotypical of school magazines. The picture is relevant to the content of the magazine as it would feature the opening as an article inside.
Left Third
I chose to insert a subheading for jobs in the left third. The significance of this is that students are always looking for jobs and this section is eye catching, with the addition of 'Jobs' in bold font.
Contents:
I really liked the idea of carrying on the picture of Simon on the All - Weather pitch onto the contents page. I also liked the quality of the picture, however I think I should have played around with the fonts more as I believe the contents page could look slightly better. On the other hand, I wanted to keep to the same font scheme with 'Hiragino Kaku Gothic StdN' for the heading and 'Didot' for the main writing font. I think perhaps the contents page could be improved by only having grass as the background, instead of the grass including people playing football at the top of the photo. This way, the contents could have quite an effective back ground.
Here is a picture of an alternative contents page based on my ideas for improvement:
Note how I have changed the main text font to 'Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN' and zoomed in on the background photo. I am not completely sure which I think is more effective, however I prefer the second one as it is clearer than the first one.
Conclusion
I believe I have created a new, modernised school magazine which is more aimed at students themselves rather than teachers, parents and perhaps family. This magazine should be used as an opportunity for students to pursue an interest in Journalism, job search, party search and read about news and events which are completely relevant to them. The magazine could easily be extended out to the rest of the school, despite it being aimed at sixth form students.
