Practice Article Writing

Making Notes:
- In our class we set up a mock interview between one of my classmates and my teacher. We were told to make notes so that we could use them to help us write our article.

Notes Made:
- Influences
- Pixie Lott
- Tattoo
- Working with a Top Produce
- Home Life

Influences:
 - had a boring life - wanted to express himself

Pixie Lott:
- new girlfriend
- going to be doing a duet - possibly a love song
- show their chemistry

Tattoo:
- large dragon - fierce and ferocious
- wanted to 'be known'
- links to song 'flame of passion' and his personality

Working with a Top Producer:
- I picked Taio Cruz to be the top producer
- pessimistic at first
- good experience
- temperamental because he kept messing up
- taio was angry because he was late (driver's fault)

Home Life:
- ideal meal - curry - spicy - chicken tikka masala
- favourite drink - Kopparberg cider
- favourite TV programme - The Inbetweeners

Final Article:

Interview with Daniel Rawlings...

Laid back as ever, in strolls Daniel Rawlings dressed in jeans, a checked shirt and a grey coat as if he is going down the town with some mates. He takes a seat on the chair in front of me ready for the interview to start.

   Dan’s rise to fame in the music industry has come around so quickly that it’s hard to imagine life without his music. With a number one album under his belt and brand new hot girlfriend Pixie Lott, we talk to new indie-rock star about his influences and the extraordinary tattoo on his back.

   We start the interview off by asking Dan his influences to which he replies about how he had a boring life whilst growing up and all he really wanted to do was to express himself and that came about through his love for music. At the young age of 10, Dan started playing the electric guitar and he can be heard playing it on several of his tracks from his recent album ‘The Unknown’. When quizzed about the title of his album, Dan replies that all the tracks are different so you don’t know what to expect when you first hear it.

   When he is back in the recording studios at the end of November, Dan will once again be writing his tracks for his new album set to come out around the early summer next year. Dan also told us that he is very excited to be collaborating with his new girlfriend pop superstar Pixie Lott. Who wouldn’t be excited to work with her? That’s going to be one hell of a bestseller when that track is released. Dan reveals exclusively to us that he thinks it will probably be a love song that they will do so that the public can see the chemistry between them and feel their love for each other through that song.  

   Dan then talks to us about working with top producer and successful artist Taio Cruz. He said that ‘it was a good experience to work with someone so successful and someone who has the eye into the music industry both as an artist and a producer.’ Dan also mentioned about how Taio got a bit temperamental as he kept messing up. Also Taio got very angry at him because he was late to the studios one day because his driver got stuck in traffic both coming to pick him up from his half a million pound mansion in Surrey and taking him to the recording studios in Liverpool.

   Moving swiftly onto his tattoo that he got done as his birthday present to himself last year. He shows it to us and it’s of a large dragon surrounded by flames which takes up the majority of his back. We asked Dan to explain the reasoning behind the idea of the tattoo. He says ‘a dragon is a fierce and ferocious creature and I want to be known like that!’ The dragon is also linked to his new track ‘Flame of Passion’ which can be seen on the single cover. Dan also says that it’s linked to his personality.

   His home life is pretty normal compared to his hectic music schedule. When asked what his ideal meal was he came back with the response of ‘a spicy curry’ later then changing it to a chicken tikka masala. Dan says his favourite drink is a Kopparberg Cider and that he loves drinking and eating in front of his 50” television in his front room whilst watching his all time favourite TV programme ‘The Inbetweeners’

   Reported by Jenna Grieves.

Preliminary Exercise

The brief for our preliminary task was:
- Using DTP and an image manipulation programme, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Additionally candidates must produce a mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of DTP.

The Main Image:
- First of all, my groups main idea for our image on the front cover was to have a student shaking hands with our head teacher Mrs Manning because they had received exceptional results in their GCSE's. We decided against this because we thought it would be more relevant to years 10-13 as those are the years which take important exams.
- After re-thinking the first idea, we thought that the main image should be relevant to all years (year 7-13) so we thought about doing something to do with our school cantine because everyone has used the cantine throughout their school experience. We came up with the idea that the school cantine had been refurbished as we thought we could come up with loads of ideas and have a really creative front cover. We also thought that we would say that the money to buy the new kitchen had been raised by the students in the school so that everyone would want to see how the money they have raised has been used.
- With our idea set, we started off by thinking of ways we could make the image really creative and we thought we would have someone cutting a red ribbon to show that the cantine is now open and ready for all students to use.

Creating the Image:
- First of all we tried to find red ribbon but unfortunately there were not any around school so we decided to make our own out of red fabric. We cut a strip out of the red fabric and folded it over so that it would be the approximate width of a piece of ribbon.
- After cutting our fabric, we went to the cantine with a camera and scissors and got one of the dinner ladies to pretend to cut the ribbon whilst we took a photo.

- Above is the final image we took. When we got back to the computer room we started to crop the image on Serif PagePlus 11 so that it got rid of my hand on the left and the trolley in the bottom right hand corner so that she would be the main focus of the front page.

Naming the Magazine:
- After we were happy with the main image and its positioning, we began thinking about a name for our magazine. We looked on the internet for similar school magazines and the names that had been given to them. We then went on a band name generator using 'Hitchin Girls' as the main words. The generator gave us loads of ideas but we liked 'To Hitchin Girls' and 'From Hitchin Girls'. After a few minutes we decided that we like 'From Hitchin Girls' better as it seemed formal yet casual at the same time to show that it was professional but also fun at the same time.

Font and Design of Masthead:
- Now that we had come up with the name for our magazine, we went onto Word 2007 and used WordArt to see which different styles looked best for our magazine.
- Our first experiment was with WordArt Style 3 which was curved upwards. We liked this one because it would go round the head of the main image.
- After experimenting with different WordArt styles, we thought that the masthead would look better with three ellipses on the end to show that the masthead is the beginning of the magazine. We also decided that we liked WordArt Style 3 the best out of all that we tried because it looked the best on the page as it went around the main image's head. We also chose the font for the masthead with it being 'Freehand 575' as it looked professional and also fancy and in the style of how hand written letters are perceived (written with a calligraphy pen) but it wasn't so fancy that it was not legible.

Adding Text to the Front Cover:
- With our main image on the page and the masthead name and design complete, we now had to come up with puff's that would appear on the front cover to attract the attention of the students to make them pick up the magazine and read it.
- Our first puff we decided to create was the puff to link with the main image about how the cantine had been refurbished. We made this puff bigger than the rest because this was the main focus of this edition of our magazine.


Changes:
- When we got back to the classroom, we were asked to evaluate ours and other people's magazines. With ours, we decided that we should add some more text to the front because it looked a bit empty with just a main image, a masthead and some text.
- Also we were asked to take a look at the brief and realised that the image we had taken wasn't a medium close up, more infact a medium shot, so we had to rethink on how the image would fit on the page without looking too stretched.
- Other things we decided to add were the school logo to show that it was particular to our school and also an edition number so that if you collected them, you would be able to put them in order and also if you looked at the magazine you could tell whether or not you had read the magazine before.

Making the Changes:

- Above it the final cropped image.
- Once the image was cropped, we stretched it the full length of the page but found it was too stretched and pixelated. We then decided that we would go back to the cantine to take more pictures to show what the 'new' cantine looked liked. So we went to the cantine and took photos of students using the new equipment. Below are the photos we took.

- We returned to the computer room after having taken these photos. We loaded them onto the computer and then thought that they seemed too focused on the cantine so we decided to take another picture of a sixth form student at work.

- We looked at all the pictures and decided on three images that would appear on the bottom (see below for final three).

Adding more Changes:
- As mentioned before, we said that we needed to add more text to the front cover so we came up with another two puffs.
- After the main puff was aimed at all years, we decided to add a puff that related to older years and a puff that related to younger years.
- Our second puff that we created was to do with the school disco for years 7 and 8, telling them that it was now time to hand in their forms to make sure that they had a chance of getting a ticket. We wanted to have something catchy as the tagline so we came up with 'Its disco time kids!'
- Our third puff that we did was related to A Level students on how to cope with stress during sixth form. For this puff, we came up with the tagline of 'Turn that frown upside down' which is cheesy but funny and will make you want to read the magazine because of the same humorous language.
- Also we said that we were going to add in an issue date so keeping with the same font we wrote 'October Issue 2010' in the same font but in a different colour and we placed it underneath the masthead in smaller sized writing.
- In the top right hand corner, we decided to add an email address in which readers could contact us as the editors to tell us things that we could change or give us ideas of what sorts of things to put into our magazine for the next week.
- Here is the image of our final cover for our preliminary task.

Contents Page:
- For our contents page we decided to use the images we had taken previously so that we could still show off our new cantine so that it will make people look at the magazine if they can see different pictures of the cantine.
- We kept the same font for 'Contents Page...' so that it would be our house style. Also we decided to keep the three elipses so that it would be a common thing throughout the magazine.
- Below is our contents page. We decided to go with a plain background so that we could have bright colours on top to make the writing stand out.