Preliminary Task: School magazine cover and contents page

This is the first stage in creating the required preliminary task for my Media Studies coursework. Using Adobe Photoshop, I have begun to produce a school magazine cover. On the left, I have used typical conventions such as a masthead, strapline, earpiece and website link. These expected features alongside the use of bright colours make the publication appealing to a universal audience, for example students, parents, teachers and governors of a school. For both the cover and contents I have used the primary colours for continuity, making my publication more cohesive. The handwritten script font also gives the magazine a casual, friendly feel.

The next stage included taking photographs for the magazine at school, one of which had to be a mid-shot of a pupil for the publication's cover. Using Photoshop, I cropped the image, changed the contrast and, colour balance and saturation of the photo before I pasted the image onto my cover. Finally, I added some text about the feature article of the issue, a cover price and a barcode. I gave the masthead a little more impact by creating a shadow under the text, using the layer style option.

 For the contents page, I copied the masthead onto the top of the page and added the page's title. To make the page look more interesting I used the 'splodge' shapes with the text. These had to be grouped (using the shift+link function) to make a single layer so I could move the shape around, deciding on its placement on the page. The photographs used were manipulated before being placed behind the text, also.