Magazine Front cover, Contents and Two page spread research.

In this Prezi presentation, I have looked at 3 different magazine front covers, contents pages and two page spreads.
I have researched these things, as it means I will have some kind of template to base my own magazine on. I will be using them as templates, as without knowing the general idea on how they are made to suit an audience, I would make an unsuccessful magazine.
Even though I will be using them as a kind of template, everything will still be my own work, and nothing will be copied.
Everything I make will be original, but following the popular trend.
From the magazine pages I have looked at, I have seen that front covers are eye catching, and all follow a similar idea of one large image, with flashy, informative text.
None of them seem to be too radical, and they cater for a very specific audience, so the same people continue to buy the magazine, and try to attract more people of the same social status or preference.
Contents pages are very distinct, too. Again, they don't really vary much, at all, and they all do exactly the same job.
Different magazines do them slightly different, some do the contents, so it shows the different pages by splitting up sections of the magazine, and then defining, page by page, what is in the sections.
Again, contents pages tend to have images on them, either to help a person know what is on the page the contents could be referring to, or to make a person excited about getting to that page, and want to keep reading to that page.
Two page spreads are done quite varied, as they can be about anything.
In the magazines I have looked at, they have all been about music, but they have all been very differently arranged, because of this, I can't follow a template as such, but look at the layout, and the way the text is arranged, and even how it is written.

Overall, from all of these, I have a pretty good idea of how magazines are usually made to look, and so I have a good idea for planning my magazine.

Music Magazine Companies Research.

Companies pres

In this, I decided to have a look at the competition, the people my magazine would be up against, and it's safe to say, I have nowhere near as many resources as them, but it did give me some good insight on just how professional I need to be in making a magazine.
Again, I will take this all into account when I plan my magazine.

Audiences Research

Audiences Research

So, I decided that as I was making a magazine, I should probably learn more about the audiences I am appealing to, plus some different theories around how audiences work.
I found a good source of information from a book, that told me quite a few theories, I'm going to have to re-read these theories to come up with a suitable way of making my magazine, to fit how audiences read a magazine.
I'll be deciding this however, once I have done more research on different aspects of media, so I can look over it all together, so I'm looking at the big picture.

Preliminary Task

This is the front cover and contents for the preliminary task I had to complete before anything else, it's given me a good idea for creating my final piece, plus helped to show me exactly what I'll be needing to do during the course of the project.

As we can see, neither of them are exactly perfect, but they weren't supposed to be the best, it just helped me to understand what I'd be needing to do, and now it's time to move on to researching different aspects of what I'll need to do to make my final piece successful.

Magazine Cover Ideas

Okay, so for the preliminary task I have to make a front cover for a school/college magazine and design the contents page.
So, I've been looking online at templates and such to try and see the best way to do it.
I'm not going to add any images of these yet, as it's difficult to find an actual picture of a school/college magazine, however, all the templates I could find online and all the actual magazines I have seen have a very similar pattern.
It's difficult to explain exactly what they're like, but, it seems to be a background picture with a large title and not a great deal of text, but exciting and text that makes you want to know what it's about.
The cover tends to have quite a bit of colour to it, but colours that mix well together and aren't too different.

I'm getting a good idea of what I want to do for it, luckily, this is just a preliminary task and so it doesn't need to be perfect.
But I still want it to be presentable.

What I decided to do.

I have decided to do a Print for my AS level Media coursework as I believe I could produce a very good and interesting print.
I already have a good knowledge of Adobe Photoshop so I could use that, plus, I feel I could be very creative in using it, without going too overboard.
I'm looking forward to starting this project as I feel I'll be able to do it very well.

First of all, I need to do a preliminary piece, my preliminary piece will be a school/college magazine.
That is still in the ideas stage, however, I already have a pretty good idea of exactly what I shall be doing.
I need to have a look at a few magazines to see how the front page is laid out and also how the pages would be arranged.
Looking forward to making a start!