St Marks Prospectus

By looking at the St Marks Prospectus I can tell there are various messages the sixth form are trying to put across to students and promote through the use of various things on the cover.
There are mainly polysemic images on the cover as opposed to text as the sixth form could be promoting the people who attend there, showing the audience that it's a friendly atmosphere which could portray that people who apply to attend there would feel comfortable in making new friends. Also there are images of students from different ethnic backgrounds which shows that the sixth form welcome young people from a worldwide audience.
The images in the prospectus have been merged together to portray the idea that the students in the sixth form are close which would encourage the reader to feel that it's a welcoming atmosphere.
The sixth form have applied the logo to the cover to show authenticy, to portray a more professional and formal approach to their audience and is also easily recognisable.
There are two main images on the cover, one being the three young girls who presumably attend the sixth and shows that they're happy to be there. There is another image of the students studying in the library showing that they are working together on desks and on computers promoting the students in the sixth form help each other, also that it's a very modern and technological school.
I feel that the sixth form has promoted themselves to be very inviting to anyone who is interested in studying in further education, as the connotations of the images used helps represent the values the sixth form have to offer their audience.

Newsman/Quad front cover analysis

In the past two lessons the class were given to magazine cover of two different universities which are Quad and also Newsman, but at first we had to make assumptions of both magazine cover and what they were going to both be like. I assumed that the Quad magazine was going to be formal and sophisticated with more textual information, whereas i assumed the Newsman magazine would be more colourful and less formal with multiple images to represent the fun side of the university.

Once we were given the covers we had a clearer idea of what both magazines portrayed to their reader, the Quad front cover was a magazine aimed at "past graduates" of the university which therefore meant their target audience would be much older. As i analysed the cover i got the impression that the content of the magazine was going to be formal as the images, texts and colours used on the cover were very sophisticated. The images used gave off the idea of success at the university, as it showed young people graduating and someone getting an award which would initially attract the target audience as it would be something they would find interesting to read. 

The Newsman front cover was informal compared to Quad, as it is aimed towards "post graduates" who attend the university as by looking at the cover you can automatically see that the magazine is based at a younger audience. The use of bright colours and multiple images would attract the reader as a younger audience would prefer the text to be short as they would want to read less as opposed to an older audience.

Nature Mag-Audience Profile

My magazine cover was designed to attract an older audience as they would have more of an interest in nature as opposed to younger people, the type of social category who would purchase the magazine would be possibly be A, B, C1 the reason is because someone living in an upper class society could have more of an interest into nature as they have more money to enjoy the aspects of the countrsyide. I have attracted the audience by using a bright background image to show the "The Beauty Beyond Nature", the masthead and the background contrast as they are both bold and bright colours are used to make the cover more effective. I have applied headlines to the cover to help the audience get an inside feel of what the magazine will entail, also i have made the price of the magazine £3.49 to attract a higher class audience as it is quite expensive so the use of sophisticated and well presented text would encourage people who are formal and well educated to purchase it.

Finished front cover of nature magazine

In today's lesson we used our original picture and started editing it on photoshop, i used the techniques we were shown in the tuturial to make my magazine cover have a more professional approach. I started off by enhancing the image by adjusting the saturation and hue, i done this to add a more naturalistic effect to my image by making the grass more greener and the trees look brighter to attract my audience to as the cover is the first thing that catches their eye.

I then applied the masthead on the cover and used an orange colour as it is bright and stands out, whereas if i used a dark colour it wouldn't be appropriate as it would be too dull for the nature topic i am working on. I decided on the masthead "The Beauty Beyond Nature" because it uses powerful alliteration as it is catchy and is a positive way to describe nature. I also added the date line, a bar code and also the price of the magazine to make it seem more realistic and professional.

In the middle of the page i added text which describes what the magazine includes, also on the left third of the page i have used headlines to stories that the reader can read if they purchase the magazine. I used white text to show the headlines as it contrasts with nature and is a good colour to use as it shows purity and health it is also a easily recognisable colour to read on a green background, it is more effective as opposed to using a darker colour because it wouldn't stand out as much to the reader.

This task was very enlightening because it helped me gain a better understanding of how to use the tools on photoshop, I have now got more knowledge of how to edit a picture in various ways and will use this task as it has helped me to be more confident using the software which will now be essential when having to complete my preliminary task.

Original cover for nature magazine

During this lesson we worked in groups and were given camers to go and take pictures of something related with nature, we then came back and chose a picture we wanted to use on designing a nature magazine. This was a small task we are doing before we start our preliminary task, this is the image i chose and you can click to enlarge it if necessary. My focus for next lesson is to plan how to lay out my cover and create it using the software, photoshop.

Introduction to Photoshop

During today's lesson we had a tuturial on how to use photoshop, the teacher spoke us through how to use various things on the programme. He taught us how to use a magnetic lasoo tool, enhancing our photos such as the lighting and colour and also applying text to the document with different fonts and sizes and this is the picture of what i created, you can click on it to enlarge :)

First Blog

In today's lesson we all got got introduced to blogging and started on our blogs, and this is the first post!