Evaluation of My School Magazine

Looking back over my work i have completed for my preliminary exercise i am very pleased with it, i think if given more time i could of progressed my skills with the software used more and created the front cover and contents page for my magazine better. In many ways my magazine front cover follows the forms and conventions of a real magazine. The name runs along the top of the magazine as its the first thing the reader will see when they read the informations on the cover, also as the magazine isn't well known all of the title is on show so that the reader can see clearly what the magazines called. The front cover also feature both the website at the bottom of the page and a buzz word to show readers that the magazine is free, the theme and colour scheme of the magazine remains consistent throughout the pages and the front cover has just one mains image with text running down along side the image on either side in columns.

         My contents page also follows the main conventions of a contents page in many ways, it has just one main image which also features on the front cover and then there are smaller images around the page that link to the feature articles. As the contents page was made using Quarkxpress there is a perfect margin around the page because i had a grid to follow on the page which i used, all the text runs in columns down the page and there are page numbers which link to feature articles. There is also a list of articles which will be in the magazine which runs down the left of the page.

         I used mainly 2 different types of media technologies in the construction of my front cover and contents page. For my front cover i used photoshop to construct it, i found this very easy as i have used the software before in a previous art graphics GCSE course so i can easily use the shortcuts to speed up processes so i had a slight advantage over some people. i used photoshop to construct my title and use the "texturizer" tool to make it look unique to my magazine, i also used Adobe Photoshop to edit my main image For my front cover and used the dodge tool to fade out the books in the background slightly and bring focus to the pupil holding the GCSE Success booklet.

         I think both software are very effective at helping construct magazine pages however i found Adobe Photoshop a lot easier that Quarkxpress as the tools are easier to follow and it is easier to manipulate images using it however it can be difficult to layout pages using Photoshop. I think Quarkxpress is better than Adobe Photoshop for helping you layout the pages as it provides templates and guidelines which give you something to stick to but it can be very difficult to follow as the tools are not very well set out so it takes some time to work out what everything is.