Preliminary Task

For my preliminary task, I have to create a front cover and contents page for a college magazine called Pulse. Here are the steps I took to make it.

Hand-drawn drafts of my Preliminary task

Before I could start making the magazine, I had to plan it so I had a rough idea of how to start it and take my photos etc.

This is the front cover for the college magazine. Each of the conventions and features on this draft are explained in the picture and the same for the contents page below.

Photos for my Preliminary Task

After planning, I had to take my photos for the task. This was the first step in the actual construction of Pulse.

The first picture I took was of my friend Georgina who agreed to model for me. One thing I had to make sure of was that the image was a mid-close up shot. Another thing I did was keep the college's entrance in the background so that the magazine relates to what it's about.

The next pictures I took were for the contents page. All of them where different parts of the college which wouldn't be distracting from the text on top of it. In the end, I the chose one I took of the top block because it was an interesting angle but was very simple.


Construction of Preliminary Task

Finally, I was on the the real construction of my preliminary task on photoshop. The first page I made was the front cover. I decided on 2 different typefaces - one for my masthead (which is very "in your face" to get the audiences attention and to go with the name) and one for the straplines/coverlines. Another key thing I did was decide on the colour scheme I was going to us. After I played around a bit with the different colours, I decided on a maroon colour. I chose this colour because it is both suitable for boy and girls (because it is a wide target audience) and yet is still quite a professional colour. I also used this colour because it links loosely to the name of the magazine, "Pulse", as in heartbeat and therefore blood - thus the colour red. I also used different shapes and the colour white to make different things stand out more than others.

Next, I made the contents page. I found this part of the preliminary task the easiest because I had already decided on the typefaces and colour schemes. The one bit I found difficult about this part was making sure the writing was easy for the audience to read because of the different colours of the picture I used. I ended up having to move the entire picture over to the side I wasn't planning on using because the colours were darker on this side.



Evaluation of preliminary task

My target audience for this college magazine is the students, so males and females 16-19 years old. There was also a secondary target audience for this magazine, which is the teachers. I think this magazine would be successful at attracting its target audience because it is simple and also appeals to both male and female audiences because of the things I've already mentioned.

I have learnt a lot about photoshop during the construction of my front cover and contents page because I had never used it before. Before I started using it, I was quite nervous to start it (because of my main weakness of technology). But I overcame this fear rapidly after I had used it for a little while. One thing I learnt ,which was very useful, was making different layers. Once I learnt how to do this, my whole opinion on photoshop was changed because if I changed something on one layer, everything else would be safe and stay the same. Another thing I learnt about photoshop was how to take the foreground of the image away from the background and then put the mast head in between them. This was my favourite thing I learnt because it made the magazine look so much more professional once I did it.

One strength I think I had when making Pulse was staying calm when things went wrong. Usually I get frustrated and give up, but on photoshop I was very patient and took my time to learn how to use it. Another strength I had was adding shapes and text on top of it to make the text stand out, it made the magazine look a lot more professional.

If I was to do the preliminary task again I think I would change the contents page. I realised after that to solve my problem of making the colour of the writing clear, I should have used a block colour on the background. This would have also meant I could have added photos to indicated what each page would look like. I couldn't do this with the picture background because it made the magazine look too chaotic, which was not the look I wanted to go for in this magazine. I think I will do this for my main piece (or have a slightly "gradiented" colour) so that I can have pictures showing pages instead because it is more useful to the audience.

This preliminary task helped me learn different parts of the technology involved in making a magazine and also helped me to understand how many different things there are. There were many mistakes I made in this task that I can now learn from and therefore not make in the construction of my final music magazine. This is especially the case with the amount of photoshop I will need to use.