I found that I really liked the idea of having 'SCHOOL' in bold letters, and then 'Life' in a white chalk on blackboard type text, which is traditionally linked to school. These ideas meant that I already had the masthead sorted, but I needed to work out what I wanted the cover to feature.
I brainstormed ideas, and came up with these cover lines:
- 'UNIFORM CARDS: YES OR NO?'
- 'Who's the form of the month?'
- 'Lunch Time Clubs!'
- 'Quote Of The Month'
- 'School Horoscopes: What's Yours?'
- 'Teachers Tips!'
- 'Club Watch: What are the top clubs right now?'
- 'Geography Field Trip!'
- 'Get organised this autumn!'
As you can see, 8 out of 9 cover lines have punctuation - it's key to making your cover seem more exciting. Because a lot of school pupils these days aren't too keen on school, I thought I would make it seem a lot more enthusiastic and in turn attractive to my audience. As my audience consists of pupils, teachers, parents and govenors, I couldn't aim it at a direct section of those 4 groups. For example, I couldn't have an article based on 'cheating your teacher into thinking you are ill' because of course teachers read it! That would be very discouraging and unsuitable for a school magazine anyhow!
In order for me to come up with an idea for my cover picture, I brainstormed the conventional school items and associations to help me on my way. Typically, I came up with:
- DETENTION!
- stationary (eg pencils, rulers, rubbers)
- Maths
- blackboard
- teachers
- friends
- homework
- organisation
- uniform
- waking up!
- being busy!
For my cover, I wanted to use some of the Autumn inspiration I had around me. The leaves were falling off the trees, and the autumn term of school was well under way. I felt that I should use this traditional connection with autumn to make the SEPTEMBER 2010 issue of my magazine.
When you first go back to school in september, you know that you must have all your books, your pencilcase, your uniform and your brain ready to go when that dreaded day calls the end to your summer. Unfortunately, we all know too well that if we aren't organised, we won't make it succesfully through our first day! I felt that organisation would be something really important at the beginning of term if ever, and so I should put it into my cover.
When you are unorganised, things are out of place, they are sprawled everywhere, and simply just not where you need them. In order for me to interpret that kind of imagery into my cover with the autumn theme, I needed to come up with an idea to pull the two together. When I combined the two things, it meant that I had things piled on top of leaves looking really unorganised. Of course, I wanted to keep my cover simple, and so decided that papers in a pile wouldn't be very simple, but also not very appealing either. I chose the very obvious connection with school, stationary, to be lying around in the leaves. It means that with items such as protractors, rulers, rubbers and pencils, your mind automatically wonders to school days. To combine this idea with autumn, it seemed to make the most sense to have the stationary spread out on top of a pile of leaves! It connects the two perfectly, but simply, which is exactly what I wanted.
In order to follow typical magazine conventions, I needed to have a picture of a person on the front. By choosing a female, I continue the theme of organisation as women are generally said to be more organised. I want to appeal to both female and male audiences, but because men never feature on women's magazine, yet women feature on men, it is more likely my audience will be broader if I have a woman on the front cover.The person I chose to feature is called Ellie. She is 16 years old and has deep red hair (which matches the leaves perfectly!) and is very pretty! Even though it is a school magazine, and it shouldn't matter about looks, I still felt that having an attractive female on the front would increase the chances of it doing well. I asked her to not wear school uniform, and to wear a black or red top. She then comes ready with a black top covered in red roses. The red roses fit in really nicely with the leaves, which makes the top work really well.
I made a pile of leaves and Ellie laid down on them (I only made them around her head as we were only having a close up shot) and then made sure they were even on both sides of her head before adding the stationary. I chose to have my brighter pieces as they wouldn't get lost in the red leaves, but also wouldn't distract too much from Ellie and the cover lines. Having a shot of the cover person laying down is something I haven't seen be done on any magazine covers, so I thought it would attract more people due to it's originality.
I took a number of shots, because I needed to make sure that Ellie was directly connecting with the audience. A slightly low/high angle would cease to do that. I asked her to do a big smile for me, because it will make the onlooker smile and in turn make them feel happier about coming to school, which is what I want. After quite a few clicks of the camera, I managed to get the light, angle, leaves and smile right!
Here is the picture I will use on my cover:
To make sure all the text I needed to put on stood out clearly I had to work out what text would show up and what wouldn't! I felt that a bright orange would blend in too much with the leaves, but a bright yellow would stand out really well! I wanted the main school heading to be white because that was the only colour that would stand out without exception against the leaves. I increased the contrast slightly to make everything in the image stronger. This also made Ellie's eyes look a lot stronger which helped to engage her and the audience. Using photoshop, I added the text - I kept it the same throughout because it looked a lot neater and presentable, just like you should be at school!
Because the shot only needed to be really simple, there wasn't a lot I needed to change about it. The only things I needed to add were the text, barcode, price and date.
I chose my magazine to be free because then it will appeal to students. Remebering that the younger pupils won't have a lot of money, and so they would lose out on the privilege of the magazine if it was costly.
My Final Cover:
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