Research and Planning - College Magazine Evaluation

After creating my College Magazine cover and contents page, I found both things I like and dislike about them.

I particularly like the way the medium close up image looks on the cover, as it suits the college theme of the magazine and seems to fit nicely in the white space left in the centre of the page and the edges of the image look smooth even though I cut the image out, by hand on photoshop, from its background. I also like the way my Magazine cover appears to be different to everyone elses, I didn't just use an image and put text over it to create the cover like some people did, I created boxes and a set layout to make it look unique. I also really like the way my 'Autumn Term' banner turned out, as it nicely cuts the image off at the correct point to make it a medium close up, without looking out of place. I like the way the information is set out on my contents page, as its not all linear and boring, its creatively layed out and interesting.

However, I dislike how the background of the boxes, which the articles are in, looks pink. I wanted to make a clear distinction between the outline of the boxes and the fill colour of the boxes and so I used the same red colour and changed the opacity for the background to make the distinction I wanted. But unfortunately the change in opacity left the background looking more pink than red, which I'm not too happy about as I wanted the colour scheme to be red and white, not red, white and pink. I dislike the background colour of the contents page, as it's too bold and hard to look at after a while.

If I could do this cover again and improve it, I would switch the colours around so that everything that appears white on my page would be red and everything that appears red would be white, just to make the magazine look a little more colourful and not as bland/dull. I would also find a different font to use rather than 'All Star' as although it suits the style of a College magazine, I'm not entirely happy with the way it looks on my cover. If I could change my contents page I would make the red on the background softer, or swap the colours around so that red become white and white becomes red, to make everything easier to look at and read.

I feel that the font sizes on my front cover are appropriate, as the mastead is in the largest font, the articles titles in the next largest font and other information on the page in a smaller font. However the artcle text sizes are inconsistent as I sized them to fit the boxes, rather than kept all the text the same size.

I do believe that my cover and contents page follows the three colour rule as the colours used are white and two shades of red.

I personally think the photograph on the cover was well taken, as it appears to look good and is angled slightly downwards, rather than head on, to make it look cuter which suits the pose my model is doing. Plus its appropriate as she is a college student and her age and dress clearly shows this.

There are 6 articles advertised on the cover of my magazine, all relating to teenage and college life to entice my target audience of college students to buy the magazine. Inside the magazine, on the contents page, there are 12 titles of articles, including the 6 on the cover, which are also all related to teenage and college life, which again appeals to my target audience of teenagers.

Over all I am happy with the way my College Magazine and Contents page turned out and I feel confident in identifying the areas of the magazine which need changing and improving, which will help me when making my Music Magazine.