30th January 2009- Homework

For homework we were asked to research a school magazine, and to analyse the content, layout and audience funding.

EVOLVE

http://www.gshs.org.uk/evolve
For my research I have looked at the magazine evolve. Evolve is the Student magazine from George Stephenson High School. It features news, views, reviews and interviews.
The magazine is published 3 times a year at the end of each term. The audience for the evolve magazine are students from years 7-11, sixth formers and parents. The magazine is free to download from the school website, and I believe that it is free to get in school as it is made by students and, for students so it seems to be non profitable. The people who produce the magazine are sixth form students.
The magazine looks for interesting news to put on the magazine and allows students and parents to submit articles.
The magazine seems to be a seasonal magazine and has issued about 6 magazines so far.

The front page for the evolve changes depending on the season and what is included in the paper. The front page of the evolve magazine is a full page image and it acts as a sort of content of the magazine with images of the main stories involved within the magazine. The magazine has a lot of black on white, and white on black text, but it also has a lot of colour. The magazine consists of many images.

The content page of the evolve magazine is put into three section. The 1st section of the content is the main one and it is for what is in the issue of the magazine. The second section of the content is the entertainment. And the third section of the content is the sports. It is split up into 3 sections and makes it easier for the readers to look for what they want to read.
The layout of the magazine stays similar all the way through the magazine. The front page of the magazine, although the front page image changes with each issue, the front page keeps a similar house style for the front page.

The whole of the magazine is pretty much revolved around student activities and news and events in and around the school. The magazine is informative and includes a lot of Entertainment.

I found the magazine quite effective because the images that the magazine contained showed a lot. the front cover of each magazine focuses on a lot of aspects within the school. The images showed activities around the the school. The magazine focuses on its aim and appeals to the audience very well. The magazine is very eyecathing and efffective in getting its point across.

28th January 2009

In this lesson we had looked at anchoring. Anchoring is giving an image meaning by adding text (captions). This helped us understand how text can change how you see an image. This helped us think about the types of images we may include in the magazine and ho we would want to present them. To help us understand this even better for the second half of the lesson, in groups, we took cameras and took pictures of nature for a brand new nature magazine. We thought about how to present our pictures and took many different shots. Charlotte and I took specific pictures like how nature was being abused and such.
I will put up these images when they have been uploaded.

26th January 2009

In this lesson we made draft pitches of a school magazine cover, in our groups. The front cover of the magazine will be put up as soon as it has been scanned on the computer.

23rd January 2009

In this lesson we discussed print design.

Layout
*The bottom margin is wider than the top margin
* Pictures and text are all aligned
*Use a variety of fonts and font sizes, but no more than threeGroup components
*Text boxes- Sub headingsUse white on black to make things stand out

Images
* We need a clear idea of what we want to say with our photos and need to make sure it represents what we want it to

Register and Tone
*Style of language needs to be appropriate to our audience. Text is 70% visual and 30% read

House Style
* Keep certain things the same on each page and each edition. This way the audience will easily be able to identify the magazine.

Also in the lesson in groups we presented our ideas for the magazines in front of the class and received feedbacks on what we did well and things we needed to improve on. Our feedback was quite positive.

21st january 2009

This lesson we had looked at the sheaf. The sheaf is a student newspaper at the University of Saskatchewan.

Website used: http://www.thesheaf.com/
In the sheaf we had looked at:
*Distribution

* Purpose

*Content

*Policy

*and funding of the sheaf

The Sheaf is distributed weekly and is distributed to all of the colleges on campus and is also available from stands situated along main traffic areas.
Its purpose is to inform and entertain. It focuses on issues of life on campus, in the city and the province. The Sheaf is also a forum for discussion on a wide range of issues that concern students, and also allows them to input into the newspaper.It is written for students, by students. Most of their staff are student journalists and it tries to stay in touch with its audience and offers insight into university issues through a student perspective.

The Sheaf is split into two main sections;

*News and Opinion - News stories, letters, features, opinion and classified

* Social life in and around campus - Band interviews, CD reviews, plays, night scene, humour and special events.

It also publicises student events occurring on campus.

The Sheaf's policy is that The Editors have the right to veto any submissions they deem unfit for the newspaper. They will decide if the article or artwork would be of interest and benefit the welfare of the readers. They will not publish racist, sexist, homophobic or any other articles of this nature.

Using the sheaf as an example to give us an idea of how to form our magazine and the kinds of things that we may want to include in the magazine, in our lesson, in our groups we looked the things we would take into account when forming the magazine. We had looked at:
*The target audience
*The title of the magazine
*The content
*The price
*Distribution-How often? How?
*Advertising
*And censorship/ editorial issues

For each of these points charlotte and I had decided:
*To aim the magazine at students in St Marks year groups 7-11(12-16 year olds)

*The title of the magazine would be called the gospel as it relates to the school

*For the content we would include things such as opinion polls, news around school, sports, activities/school trips, ask the teacher (this is a way for students who are not very confident in asking for help/advice to teachers face to face, they could send their questions to be put into the magazine, and answers to them).

*The price of the magazine would be 60p- so that it is affordable for the school students.

*The magazine would be distributed every half term, and they would be sold via form time, at the front office and in the school library.

*The kinds of advertising that will be included in the paper are things like further education, the Harlow Youth Council (HYC) and Young Essex Assembly (YEA) - this is run by students that are elected into the HYC and YEA, and sports adverts. We chose these types of adverts because it relates to the students.

*There will be no form of discrimination in the magazine or any gossip.

19th January 2009

On the 19th January we were given details about our media project. In our lesson we were given the preliminary task which was to produce a front page of a new school/ college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in a medium close up shot with some appropriate text and a masthead. We are also required to produce a mock up of the layout of the contents page.

For this task our class separated into groups and we discussed what we needed to look at to make the magazine. We discussed things like:
*The target Audience
*What images we will use
*The language we will use
*Content – the audience expectations
*How we would attract the target audience
*Format - Placement and size of images and text
*Iconography
*and House style