Preliminary Front Cover Draft

Before creating a draft version of a school newsletter/magazine I first had to carry out some research on the typical conventions this type of media text includes. During my research I looked at the Deyes High School newsletter and St John Bosco school magazine.

After looking at both products I discovered how each text differentiated, using this information I could work out who their relative target audiences were. The front cover of the Deyes High School newsletter I thought was aimed at the students parents seeing as its features were very formal, Serif fonts were used and there was no image, stereotypically speaking adults tend find this kind of formal, factual layout more aesthetically pleasing than children/adolescents do. However the same could not be said for the St John Bosco school magazine, the features that were included (Large image, Puffs, San serif fonts) on its front cover, again, stereotypically speaking tend to be more aesthetically pleasing to students who often appreciate visual aids more then their parents.

Knowing this, I thought would create a unique product and try and combine certain conventions of the two different styles of school paper which would hopefully appeal to both parents and students therefore widening my demographic and potential audience.

Above is a drafted image of my front cover with labels included explaining why I have chosen the features and what I hope they will achieve. If the image is too small to view in its current state then it can be enlarged by right clicking it.

The next step in my project is to research the conventions of a school newsletter/magazine contents page, and create a draft version based on my findings, I will use the same two products that I used for researching front covers as I hope to learn about any consistency they may have used in colour schemes, layout etc and implement some of this into my project.

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my blog, during the next 6 - 7 months i will be updating this with regular posts including details of my coursework and the research i have done. My overall aim is to provide a portfolio of my work, for the readers to clearly understand how i have completed my coursework and how it has developed over time. If i have achieved this by the end of the allocated time i will judge this project to be a success.

The brief i have been given is split into two tasks. The first task is preliminary task and will consist of creating a front page and contents page for a school newsletter/magazine, the second task will be the main task and that will consist of creating an front page, content page and double page spread for an original music based magazine. Primary and Secondary research aimed at my target demograph will be used throughout the task to shape what the final product will look like.

My intentions are to successfully create a product that fans from a specific music genre can identify with, it will have to include features and colour schemes relevant to the genre, while being original in its own way.

The first thing I intend to do is start on my preliminary task of creating a school newsletter/magazine, to achieve this i will first look at existing school papers and possibly blogs from other students, this will give me a better understanding of the conventions and features that school newsletters include.

Finally on the subject of research, i plan on carrying out as much of it as possible, this is because as of now, my knowledge of target audience's for, conventions and colour schemes is very limited. I believe the best way of doing this would be to analyse existing products and point out the reasons why certain features where included. By doing this i will hope to achieve a better understanding of what appeals to their customers and implement some of these idea's into my own creation.