Music magazine contents page

Music Magazine Cover

Music magazine double page spread

College magazine contents page

For my main image, I took a photo of the brand new building at college. I did this because it is relevant to the magazine and it looks good, so it shows the college off well and it makes the contents page look smart. If i took this photograph again I would probably use a higher quality camera instead of using my phone. I would do this because to make the photograph fit the whole of the contents page I had to stretch it so the quality doesn't look as good as it could have done.

 

For this page, I kept the fonts the same as on my cover page. I did this to keep continuity throughout my magazine. I also tried to keep the same colour scheme by using the black, white and red/brown colour. However on this page compared to the cover page, the red looks more pink,which I didn't want because it's not going to appeal to both girls and boys as much as I wanted it to even though it is the same colour.

I have based my layout around my background picture. I did this so that you can see the picture properly and I changed the colour of the texts and text boxes so that you can see the writing clearly over the background at different points on the page.

This page appeals to my target audience of college students well, because all of the pages are full of useful and relevant stuff for college students. The colour scheme is kept the same as on the front cover to appeal to the same people throughout the magazine and is aimed to appeal to all ages and genders of college students. I think that this image appeals to my target audience as well, because it isn't either too 'girly' or masculine, so should appeal to everyone, as it is showing the new building at their college off. This is also relevant to one of the cover lines because the new building is talked about in one of the articles.

 

To make this contents page I used InDesign. I found this quite difficult to use because I had just got used to using Photoshop and it's quite different to that. I found making some shapes quite difficult, such as triangles so I overcame this by changing my design and not using them.

 

Overall I am quite pleased with my final contents page, I changed the design so many times and I think that it looks smart and will appeal to my target audience.

College Magazine Cover

 

College Magazine Cover

 

For my main image I took a photo of my friend Alice. I used this photo because I think that with what she's wearing she looks like a typical college student. I chose to photograph her in front of a brick wall because I think that this makes the background more interesting but I could still easily put coverlines over the top of it and the picture. I think that by using a brick wall it could have been taken anywhere, for example outside a college, which makes the picture relevant to the magazine. My cover uses direct mode of address to make the reader feel that the magazine is more aimed personally at them as it looks like the model is looking at them.

 

I have used serif and sans serif fonts. For the main coverlines I have used a serif font to get the attention of the reader, as it is quite a bold font. It also looks quite formal, which is relevant to the coverlines, as they are talking about revision, jobs and universities which are quite formal subjects. Underneath this I have given a brief description of what the article is going to be about. This is in a sans serif font, as it is more informal as it is like it's speaking directly to, or asking the reader a question. As the magazine is aimed at college students, which are mostly teenagers, I didn't want it to look too formal, so I think that the mix of both formal and informal texts work well together as they are relevant to the coverlines. For the masthead I have used a serif font which is the same as the font on the coverlines so that it ties in with them. I have stuck to the two fonts of Book antiqua (the serif font) and MS Reference Sans Serif (the sans serif font) so that the magazine hasn't got lots of different fonts on the page as it would look too busy if I had used lots of different ones. The only font that is different to these two is the one for the magazine date, which is another serif font, Lucida Calligraphy. I used this in a different font as it doesn't need to be the same as the other fonts because it is only small and doesn't link to the rest of the magazine.

 

 

For my covers colour scheme, I chose to only use 3 colours, which were white, red and black. I used these colours because they aren't either masculine or feminine so they should appeal to everyone. I used dark reddish brown, which is associated with autumn which is when this magazine is issued as it is a September magazine. Black is associated with elegance and formality, which links well with the serif fonts that I have used to make the magazine look quite formal and grown up. White can be used to represent success and cleanliness, and usually has a positive connotation. This works well for my magazine because I didn't want the magazine to look cluttered so because it has connotations associated with cleanliness this makes it look more tidy. Because it is used to represent success this looks good on the front of a college magazine because success is what college students are aiming for, either in their grades or jobs at the end of college. As the background is a brick wall, it is quite orange, and this is a cheerful colour which has connotations of happiness, enthusiasm, determination and encouragement, which all work well for a college magazine cover. It has a high visibility which is good to catch potential readers' attention so that they want to buy the magazine. It also makes the cover look more colourful and cheerful than just using red, black and white.  

 

 My target audience is college students, so it needed to appeal to both males and females aged about 16 to 19 years old. I used the colours which i talked about above to do this. The colours are neither masculine or feminine and mostly have connotations associated with success and happiness. The model that I have used and the image in general is suitable for college students. The model looks like an average college student, and the brick wall is an easily coverable (with coverlines) but quite colourful background which would be appealing to a potential buyer and my target audience. By using puffs and pugs I am appealing to my target audience of college students by offering a free give away or giving the chance of one, which everyone likes. The giveaways were the chance to win an Ipad and a free starbucks voucher, both of which appeal to college students as the Ipad would be useful for them to do their work and Starbucks as it is a popular drinks shop with people that age and a free drink from there would be useful to them as they are saving money.

 

I used Photoshop to make this magazine cover and I found it quite simple once I had been shown how to use it. The problem that I faced when using Photoshop was trying to make triangles to make the pug at the bottom of the page to give the effect that part of the page was folded over. In the end I had to just make a square and put a line through it to make it look like two triangles and rotate it so that it fit right on the corner of the page. I couldn't make a barcode on Photoshop either so I had to use Paint to make it using individual lines and then save it and insert it as a picture on to my cover.