Homework - 8th October 2013

Analyse the front cover of the magazine given or one of your own choice.



The front cover I analysed was from a magazine called 'Your Surrey Magazine'.

1. The image on the front cover has been chosen to represent what the genre of the magazine is and link it to the text. The image is a long direct shot, this is because they want to focus on the dress, which is the major factor for women in weddings, as well as to show the reader, the model is happy and confident, like every woman on their wedding day.

2. The genre of the magazine is wedding and marriage; I know this because the image shows a woman in a wedding dress, which is the first feature you think about when it comes to weddings. Furthermore, the magazine links the image with the text and refers to weddings in the text 'Tie the knot'.

3. I was unable to find out the readership statistics for this magazine, so I do not know any scale of the number of readers it has.

4. The model in the picture is wearing a wedding dress, as well as other wedding props such as, shoes, veil and a wedding ring; they've done this in order to appeal to their target demographics, including women and couples getting married. The image shows a beautiful model who is happy and confident, they've done this to show how a woman feels and should feel on their wedding day, so they've presented the model this way to show weddings as happy and beautiful; the best day of a woman's life. In addition, you can see they are trying to target women, as the colour scheme used is pink and white, this shows femininity and white to show tradition.

5. The shot shows a the woman in a wedding dress, sitting on a white bench in a garden; this conveys a message of how they think wedding's should be and how people want them to be, happy, confident and perfect. By showing the model in a white wedding dress suggests tradition; tradition is referred to most with weddings, especially the big white dress. Using the white bench in the image as well, suggests the theme of tradition; the colour white in wedding suggests beauty and purity in weddings and marriage, tradition is always that a woman wears a white dress. However, they choose not to place the woman in front of a church to match the traditional theme, this is because it will cause restrictions between ethnicities in wedding magazines, they don't want to convey the wrong message between marriage and ethnicity.

6. They have mainly used pink and white as the colours over the front cover as it matches the theme and also reaches the target demographics. The colour pink is used to target the demographics of women, women are targeted if they're getting married or enjoy weddings.Pink targets women as it generally a feminine colour and is attractive. The other main colour used is white, this is to represent tradition, purity and beauty in weddings, it also targets women as its a simple colour and is a major aspect with weddings.

7.Lighting is used in the image naturally, they have an outside image on a sunny day, therefore natural lighting is made; this creates a positive effect as it attracts people and shows the ideas of weddings being happy, this is pathetic fallacy, as the weather is showing how the model is feeling. The lighting also causes a effect over the model, as it highlights her face to show her emotions to be happy and confident, resulting in positive effects being created of the concept of weddings.

Two-page Spread

This is my two-page spread for my preliminary task, it relates back to the main image and headline on my front cover 'The RIGHT attitude'. It shows the image which I used on my front cover and thee text relates to the school theme which is appropriate, as well as includes a variety of language devices such as facts and statistics, repetition and direct language to create effect on the reader. I could improve next time by using a variety of images to go with the text, as well as use more language devices.

Font Chart

This is my font chart which I produced to show different word art font styles which I thought looked nice; this helped me focus a variety of font styles which I liked to be my headline and masthead for my school publication. My school magazine was three different types of font styles; for my masthead and main headline I decided to use the sixth word art on my font chart, as I thought it was clear and bold to catch the eyes of the demographics. Other font styles which I chose to use was 'Freestyle Script', 'Franklin Gothic Medium Cond', 'Gabriola' and 'Arial Black' for the different parts of the text in my magazine. The font chart made me decide what was best for my school publication to make it look better and it helped me a lot to focus on the best way to present my magazine.

Production Diary

WEEK 3:

This week we were finishing off our preliminary task of creating our school publication. Since last week where I started to create my magazine flat plan, I have now finished my magazine's front cover and contents page. From looking at my front cover and contents page of my school magazine, which I titled 'Harris Girls' Good News' I am very happy at the way it has turned out, especially as it was my first time producing a magazine; I now cannot wait to start our main task of producing music magazines, hopefully by that time I would of learnt how to use different features and make it look much better than my school magazine. I think I reached my target demographics, this is because my target I tried to reach, which was a variety of an audience, including school students (preferably girls, as it's a girl’s school), teachers, sixth formers (boys and girls) and lastly the community. I thought community was a good demographic to target, as a school plays a massive part in the community, from activities to reputation; a school should help out in the community and bring the community closer, this is why I tried to target them in my magazine. From my original plan and mentioning it in my production diary in week 2, instead of keeping the colours to a variety of blues, I tried to add in additional colours, such as reds and purples. I used red and blue mainly as it’s a neutral colour that doesn't just target a specific identity in the demographics, as well as using purple to stand out on top of the other colours.

The next thing I am planning is to hopefully start my two page spread for my school magazine, as well as to start my main task and research into it. I am really excited to start my main task as soon as possible as I feel I am ready to get started and show more technique in my upcoming production of the magazine, now that I have learnt doing these things in my preliminary task.

Colour Chart

This is my colour chart which I produced to show colours that I thought looked nice together and blended well; this helped me focus on the theme of my school publication and find out what would look nice and what wouldn't. My school magazine was mainly made up of blues as it is a neutral colour that attracts a variety of people; this is shown on my colour chart by most of the colours being different types of blues (light to dark) and what colours they mixed well together. This colour chart made me decide what was best for my school publication to make it look better.

Finished Cover Page

This is the second part of my complete draft for my preliminary task of creating my school publication; it shows my finished contents page, with images and text. Likewise with my front cover, I feel quite happy with the way it has turned out, with the types of colours I used together and tried to mix them well together, rather than using the previous idea I thought of doing. Out of both the front cover and contents page, I am happier with my contents page, as it's neatly organised and not messy or crowded, yet it still covers the majority of the space. In addition, I hope to get more of a variety of images and use more colours in my main task; this has really helped to focus on my main task and know where to improve.

Finsihed Front Cover

This is my completed draft for my preliminary task of creating my school publication; it shows my finished front cover, with images and text. I am quite happy with the way it has turned out, I tried to use colours which blended well together rather than using just one which was my original thoughts; I think it reaches the target demographics of a girls' school, which was my plan, as well as trying to target sixth formers as well which also include boys. With my cover page, I feel it is a little messy and it could be more organised; I tried to balance out the use of text and images on the front cover and used most of the space. Furthermore, I would have hoped to of captured more of a variety of images, but due to my timing, which I need to improve for next time, hopefully this can happen with my main task.