Preliminary Task

Initial Ideas:

I am going to create a college magazine; this magazine will be all about college life. It will be made for the use of new students wanting to study at college; it will help to make them feel at ease about starting college. My first thoughts of how my magazine will look are; it will have an image on the right hand side of the cover, this image will promote the ideas of good times at college. There will be two or three cover lines on the left hand side of the cover, and a main cover line will be placed at the bottom centre of the cover. All of the colours will promote the college (blue, green and white) and they will suit the background image.

Proposal:

I will be aiming my magazine at new students to the college, year 11's. This magazine is targeted at this specific audience as it will entice them to come to the college. All of the stories within the magazine will be about starting college and advice on the courses they should choose.

My magazine will be Initially to Inform new students/year 11 pupils of what college is really like, to help do this I will Include Interviews with current students discussing a typical college students day. This magazine will also include a bit about each course on offer at the college and advice on choosing which course is right for them. To add a bit of fun and to make this magazine a must have I will Include a competition to win a great prize such as money, laptops, etc. something to help with their course. I think that the above content details of the magazine will be used as cover lines; the competition could be called 'WIN' or 'PRIZES'.The name for my magazine will be called 'College Life', I have chosen this name as the magazine Is all about Introducing the college life to new students. The name is specific to its purpose. When thinking of my final name I came up with a few others as well; 'Student Life', 'New Start' and 'Student Weekly'. I decided not to use 'Student Weekly' as after I thought of the name it didn't really work if the magazine was only going to be aimed at new students, it wouldn't need to be published every week. I also thought that 'New Start' seemed too vague; it wasn't really a specifically good name for a student magazine.
At this point I don't really know which font types I will use; I only know that I want the masthead and the main text to be two different fonts, to make it look separate. I also know that the text that I do choose will be modern, sans serif (No tails/ flicks) something like Ariel or Tahoma. The font style and size will have to be big so that it is clear to read from a fair distance.This magazine will only be published annually during the autumn/ winter months for when the majority of the new students/year 11's are thinking of courses to apply for. This magazine can guide them with their decision.
'College Life' will be published as a small A5 booklet/ magazine. The reason for this is so it is easy for the new students/year 11's to pick it up and place it into or keep it in their bags. 
The image that will be placed as the main feature in the front cover will be of a student or group of students that look happy (something like talking with friends, reading, on a PC) this will help to influence the new students into coming to this college and to not feel so nervous as the front cover will be positive. To get this image I will go out around college with a camera to achieve the image that i want, i could either ask friends to pose for the image or find wiling volunteers around the college to help me.

On my Contents page i could again use some of the images that I previously took and discarded for the cover. These images could once again include students having fun, laughing with friends, students studying, the surrounding college buildings or maybe the library. I could also include the colleges logo somewhere on the page. The colours that i could use could relate to the college, like the college logo colours (blue, white and green) also i could use colours that maybe appear in the images i have taken.

Flatplans:

Here are the flatplan ideas for the cover of my magazine. This is an example of two designs that I thought of, they both look similar but there are slight changes to each of them. I think for my final magazine I will choose the first idea as it seems to fill up the space more and it goes with my idea to have a person on the right side of the cover.

Here are the flatplan ideas for the contents page of my magazine. They are both going to be laid out in columns with the article pages listed down both the left and right side. I will also include images that go with the article stories, such as buildings, people etc. I think that I am going to choose the idea on the right, the second one as the images will be bigger to make it more interesting and visual, I will also include space to add a competition or some sort of fact.  

Skills Audit

This is a check list of skills that would be needed to use as part of our AS Media Coursework. Here you can see a list of skills I can do and a few I can't.

Technology Impact

Technology has and is playing a huge role in the creation and distribution of print magazines, with many people converting to online methods to get their 'fix' on all things gossipy, girly, cars, music, cooking, style etc. A lot of content from inside magazines is now stored on the brands website, which means the articles can be accessed for free, which in the long run will result in the demise of the magazine sales. 'Why do people need to go out of their house, to go to the shop, to buy a magazine for £2-5, when they may only read a few articles?' 
The increase of citizen journalism can also be a negative impact on the magazine industry, as the job of a 'specialist journalist' may no longer be needed as the public can now write opinion pieces of what they are most interested in- this way the magazine company don't have fork out loads of money on staff, maybe just paying the odd fee for freelance journalists or look out for voluntary contributions. Another problem with citizen journalism could be that the gatekeeping or mediation might not be as well thought out, allowing 'sensitive subjects' to be brought to the forefront and allowed to be published for people to read, and then cause hate and dampen the reputation of the company.
Most people nowadays have some sort of typing software, whether it be word, notes or memos for example, which make the process of writing a good piece of work possible for anyone to do. People are now trained and skilled to use the same software that would've been so difficult for journalists to use- so this to some may never be seen as a 'real' job.