Magazines: Front cover practical task

The best way to learn the conventions of a media product is to create one! Your first task for the Magazines unit is to create an original front cover for an existing magazine.

This will also help to prepare you for the cross-media coursework starting with your coursework teacher in June.

Task: Choose an existing magazine and create a front cover for a new, original edition of your chosen publication.

Example: student version of Vogue magazine...

Magazine practical production: tasks

Create a blogpost called 'Magazine practical task research and planning' and complete the following tasks:

Research

1) Use Google to research potential magazines that you could use as your brand/design for this project. Create a shortlist of three potential magazines and embed an example front cover from each one. We recommend looking at lifestyle magazines or a similar genre as these are more achievable to re-create.

2) Choose one of the three magazine brands to use for your project. Then find three different front covers for your chosen magazine and embed them in your blogpost. Analyse the fonts, colours and typical design. What is the language or writing style? How are the cover lines written? You need to become an expert in the design and construction of this magazine and its branding.

Planning

1) On a Word or Google document, plan your main cover line (also called the 'main flash') - this is the main cover story that links to your central image.

2) Briefly plan the image you will need for the cover - model, costume, make-up, lighting etc. At this point, simply describe the image you need to capture.

3) Write the cover lines and any additional text you need for your magazine cover.

4) Sketch out your cover on plain A4 paper using your written planning. Take a photo of your sketch and upload it to your blogpost.

Photoshoot

You will need to arrange a photoshoot for your cover image in your own time - you can use your phone or your own camera to take an image. If you don't have a phone or camera that is suitable, you can sign out a camera from the Media department.

1) On your planning document, write the date, time and location of your photoshoot and the name of the model or photographer you will use (you can choose anyone to be your cover model or you can be the cover model yourself).

Photoshop design

You will have one Media lesson to create your magazine cover on Photoshop but you will probably need more time than this. In order to complete this work, you will need to work in DF06 on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday when you don't have other lessons or use Photoshop at home. We will give you details on this in class as we are very lucky to have FREE access to Adobe Creative Cloud worth around £25/month. 

Photoshop tutorials

The best way to learn Photoshop is simply to start creating your magazine cover and learn as you go. There are thousands of tutorials on YouTube to help you - here are just a couple of examples: 

Publication to blog and evaluation

1) Once you have completed your design in Photoshop, go to 'File > Save as' and save your finished Photoshop magazine cover as a JPEG image. Then, upload it to your blogpost.

2) Write a short evaluation of your work: have you succeeded in your brief to create a new, original edition of an existing magazine? Would your cover stand up alongside a couple of genuine covers of your chosen magazine? How professional is your work alongside those genuine examples?

3) Finally, what would you do differently if you completed this assignment again?

Deadline: end of lesson Monday 10 May