Preliminary Task - Planning the cover

After I'd gathered a general idea of what my cover should include, I went onto plan it by drawing up a thought shower of my ideas. I separated it into 4 branches; Name, Colours, Stories/Cover lines and Photo.
For the name of my school magazine, I just wanted it to somehow connect to the name of my school "Monkseaton High School". Some of my basic ideas included MonkMag, The Kelley Times (as in Dr Kelley the head teacher) and ChunkyMonkey. I decided against these as I felt they didn't hold enough meaning to them and weren't encoded very well. Although MonkMag does include alliteration, I don't think it's very original, and with The Kelley Times, I think it could attract aberrant readings of being a newspaper which definitely would not be a message I would want to put out to students as it just wouldn't interest them at all as it may seem more like a publication for parents. ChunkyMonkey also seems to have more of a connotation to food, and some may associate it with the Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
Ideas that I developed after more time to think about it are Habit and Monky Pi. Habit is the name of the clothing monks used to wear, therefore tying it into "Monkseaton", and it would also imprint the idea of reading the magazine every time it came out, like a habit. However, I don't think students would understand monks wearing habits, so it may not be very suitable. Monky Pi I think would also be a good name, as "Monky" is an abbreviation for the name of our school which will be widely known among students but possibly not by outsiders, therefore a symbolic/arbitrary sign that has to be culturally learned and will most likely be interpreted in the preferred reading, unlike Habit. Also the signifier Pi has the two main signified meanings of mathematical pi, giving it an academic twist, as well pie the food, a word which has become a youth culture catchphrase among many courtesy of Weeble and Bob. I have not decided between these, so I will let my audience choose when I carry out my questionnaire
For the theme colours of this new school magazine, I took inspiration from the logo of Monkseaton High School's new image, as it incorporates many bright colours which I think would attract attention on a cover and again it would allow the magazine to link into the school's image. The colours I've chosen from the logo are sky blue, royal blue, hot pink, lime and grey. The design of the new logo has also given me an idea for the background of the cover, as I could manipulate splay of coloured blocks into a more youthful, chunky style to appeal more to students.
For the stories/cover lines I decided to focus on the value of information being new, as there are a lot of changes going on in school, so it felt suiting to reflect this in the respective school magazine. Because the development of the new school is such a big topic at the moment, I chose this as my main story, and came up with the cover line "Evolution of the Monky", again I tried to include an academic twist. "Evolution" also fits very well to my theme of new information. Other stories I came up include information about the new school uniform, where I could have a juvenile style cover line like "Colour in!" or "Dress Up!" in trying to appeal to the child in the students, reverting back to blackboards to save the environment where the song title "Back to Black" could be used and others like tips on being a new student or new school fashion. After deciding on my main story, I'll see which ones my target audience would prefer from the results of my questionnaire.
Photos I'd consider generally related to the stories I'd came up with, but as I decided on my main story quickly, I thought it would make sense to have my photograph relating to the new school story. Trying to carry on the educational theme, I plan to have a student looking confused over a scientific diagram of evolution which ends in a picture of the new school.