School Magazine Evaluation

The brief for my preliminary task was to make the front cover of a school magazine and a contents page.
My first task was to research different school magazine covers and for this I used Google Images. As a class we produced a poster using all the images we found from our research, listing the good and bad points about the covers. I think I could have interacted more than I did and given more of an input. I made a basic plan of my front cover and contents page using word. This was pretty simple but I could have put in more information in my plans. I used Pages to create my actual cover and contents page. As I have used Pages before I knew the basics and I felt like making my magazine cover would be fairly simple. I used photos I have taken myself as my background images and for stories. I did struggle to think of stories to begin with but I soon overcame this problem as I progressed through making the cover. I followed my plan layout to set out my cover and the two are very similar. However, with my contents page I did not exactly follow my plan and tweaked the layout as I made it. I felt my end product layout was more suitable and I preferred it to my original plan. Overall, I think I completed my brief to a good standard. If I were to change anything I did then I would make my front cover and contents page more creative and interesting. I would also use the time I had to take photos more wisely. I went ahead not knowing what I wanted and I think this set me back slightly, but fortunately I had taken some photos I could use and I managed to think of a story to match.
I asked other people for feedback of my magazine cover and contents page. One said that the I had good use of colours as they complemented each other. They also liked how the colours matched the school logo. Another said they liked my use of different types of font and the layout of my front cover. However, they also said that putting all of this together could be a bit overpowering. I have taken this feedback - both positive and negative - and I will put it to good use it in the future.

School Magazine Content Page Plan

Here is my basic plan of my content page.

School Magazine Cover Plan

Here is my plan for my school magazine cover. It is quite basic and just has the main information like the layout and where everything will go.

Preliminary Task - School Magazine

For my preliminary task I have to make the front page of a magazine for my school and a contents page.
To begin, I searched Google images for examples of other school magazine covers to give me an idea of what I need to do. I found a few good ones, and a few bad ones. Here are some examples:

The images above are ones I thought have room for improvement and the images below are ones I thought were quite good and that I like.
The magazine cover above is one I do not particularly like because it does not really look like a magazine cover and it is one that I would not takes ideas from. This cover has too much blank spaces and not enough information about what is in the magazine. It also does not include anything to do with the school as it is a photo of the person who made it, there are no photos of students and there is no school logo.

In the magazine above, I like the use of bright colours as it attracts your attention and it contrasts against the black backgrounds. I also like the layout and style of this front cover so I may use some ideas from this magazine in my own. This cover is my favourite out of the four photos I have uploaded.