School/General Magazine Research

Preliminary Task: Research of Existing Magazine Covers October 20

As a class we looked at various magazine front covers and spoke about their similarities and their differences. We noticed a pattern that reoccurred on almost every cover, we then found out that this was part of the codes and conventions expected of a magazine cover. These conventions included: mastheads which are conventionally found at the top of the magazine, banner headlines which are usually found in the middle of the page, puffs which are commonly seen on the right third of the page, menu strips which are conventionally found at the bottom of the cover, barcodes are usually seen at the bottom left or right hand corners, medium shot and cover lines which are frequently found on the left third of the cover etc.

Then we looked specifically at school magazines and saw that they had the same similarities as the other magazines for example having a banner headline, cover lines, main image etc. This then gave us a clear template as to how our school magazine should turn out in order for it to be recognisable as a professional magazine. I then used this newly found knowledge to create my preliminary task.