Preliminary Task Front Cover

The image below shows the front cover page of my preliminary task; a school magazine with target audience of Sixth Form Students at the Priory School in Hitchin.

I decided that i wanted the name of my magazine to be original so i called my magazine 'The Priory'. This therefore is appropriate for my magazine, as it is intended for students attending the Priory School. I also thought that the name of the magazine would appeal to my intended audience, as often in schools students at a higher age are more likely to read what the school produces than that of the younger years.
I have used a simple colour scheme, that was relevant to the school - Black, Red, white and Grey are the school colours and therefore i thought that it would be beneficial to have those colours for my house colours. I thought that these colours complemented each other, and neither are particularly gender specific. This reflects the fact that my magazine is not aimed at any particular gender, and the use of these inexplicit colours will hopefully mean that neither boys nor girls will be uninterested due to the colours used. I decided to use

Red because it is one of the colours featured on the school crest, and some of the school jumpers. I therefore thought that this would give my magazine some sort of brand identity, as people would recognise that it was aimed at students from the Priory School. I also tried to do this by putting the school crest on the front cover but also naming my magazine " The Priory".
The crests and school name all help to give some information about the intention of the magazine. I thought that it was important to include this information on the front cover not only because the magazine itself is new, but also so that any potential readers will know what they are about to read. I hope that, by including this information, more people will want to read the magazine, as they will know what it is about before they pick it up- it would be a problem to my target audience if they misinterpreted the magazine's overall intention.

I tried to make the front cover draw the reader in by including  a range of different pictures. The pictures that I included are all of school students, and I also tried to be informative with the shots that I used because I wanted readers to know what they were potentially going to read. As I needed to include a medium close-up of a student, I used the main focus of the page as the photo of students that attend the Priory sixth form; I thought sixth form students would be able to identify with this image as the students modelling in the picture can be seen in and around school. I put this picture in the middle of the page so that it was in the readers' eye line, and took hold of their attention. I also included three pictures underneath the main photograph, all set in a working school environment. I put them underneath the main photo as I thought they were less important and eye-catching as the main picture but gave enough insight for the reader to apprehend what would feature within the magazine.
I also included a snippet of what to expect in the rest of the magazine on my front page. I picked three of the most contrasting and interesting features from my magazine, and advertised them on the front page. I did this because I wanted to once again inform the reader of what they could see in the rest of the magazine. I positioned this writing underneath the smaller photo's as they had relevence to the pictures themselves. I decided to put this in white which is what the Masthead is in. I did this because it contrasted with the dark colour of the gate, and as a result it stands out from the photograph and will hopefully attract the reader's attention even though it is in small print.