Preliminary Task

My previous task at the beginning of the year was to create a school magazine for Trinity School. To do this I had to gather information from my target audience as well as analyze the codes and conventions of a school magazine. My target audience for this task was KS4 and Sixth Form and I was able to get reliable information from them on how to go about designing my magazine and what should go in it.

Brief: To design and create the front cover and contents page for a school magazine aimed at pupils.

For this task I did some research into school magazines and looked closely at the codes and conventions of them and then set about trying to apply this to my work. I researched school magazine front covers such as:

These school magazine front covers helped broaden my knowledge and I was able to spot the typical codes and conventions of a magazine and in particular, a school magazine. Whilst carrying out extensive primary research into the codes and conventions of particular parts of magazines and media theories such as Gaze Theory, I did some research into contents pages also: 

Again, I was able to pick out the pros and cons of these school magazine contents pages and benefited from this research. I then moved on and thought of a way to get some feedback on my ideas from my target audience and decided to create a questionnaire which posed questions specific to the ideas I had. The feedback I received varied and some conflicted with the ideas I had and I was able to put some of my ideas aside for the benefit of my final product and was then able to take on the ideas given to me by my target audience. Below is the questionnaire I gave out to my target audience.
  

I also learned that constantly keeping in contact with your target audience and your peers is good because you can get constructive criticism which used in the right way can help aid your performance.

All of this is relevant because I was going to use these skills in the main task, the music magazine. I was going to have to remember all the skills I learned and the basic codes and conventions of a magazine.

While doing this task and being new to Media Studies I learned a range of different skills. I learned how to use Photoshop, In Design and Adobe Illustrator effectively. I learned how to apply primary and secondary research to my work. For example I created a questionnaire for my target audience to out and applied it to my work.

After this I felt confident creating my final product and began my hand drawn drafts. This is how they came out:

...and this is my final product: