Preliminary Task

My final college magazine: Preliminary Task

Self-Evaluation:

My brief was to produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriate laid-out text and a masthead. I have now completed all my production for my college front cover magazine. My production has become successful as it looks like a professional magazine that a school would publish and students would be attracted to pick up and have a read.

My strengths of this task was that I planned what my headlines was going to be and also, the colour that was suitable for the title and front cover. Also, I chose an appropriate font and colour for my title as it is really important that the title catches the eye of the reader so that it attracts more potential readers.

My title for my college magazine is in black and dark green on a light coloured background, in order for it to stand out and the font is large. Also, this is the basic codes and conventions for the title on any magazine page. This background layer of the title was darkened a little as I thought it stood out too much. For the background of my cover magazine; the gradient tool enabled me to fade this brick wall into a black background, making the edges look modernised.

I found trying to get the correct angle on my camera difficult, as I didn’t know which position was suitable. I then thought hard to when designing a front cover for my gcse production so; I tried getting my knowledge from that into this college magazine. At the end I decided to include two people from my as media class for my front cover, I then took the picture as a mid-shot and medium close-up as instructed in my brief.

I am new to the DTP software; in design as, I have never used this software. However, I went on tutorials on this website: “http://freecourses.tutsplus.com/introduction-to-magazine-design/”. It was very useful as it explained step-by-step how to use in design. I mostly found importing the image from the desktop to the software hard because; it would turn blurry every time I’d import the image for my front cover. Therefore, I resolved this by using these effective tutorials.

I chose the image of my two classmates holding a-level and writing books, wearing ID tags; this is to make it look like a real magazine that would be published in the school. I took the image as a medium mid-shot, this is because it was stated in my brief however, if it wasn’t specified in my brief I would of still chosen the medium mid-shot, because it is more suitable for a college magazine.

Similarities comparing my magazine and other professional magazines: My magazine has a bold title with a big font size like other professional magazines. Also, it has appropriate headlines on the right and left hand corner of the cover of the magazine. The barcode it included in my magazine which makes it look more professional as other high quality magazines use it. Professional magazines put issue dates in their magazines like popular fashion, sport, bakery ect magazines therefore, I put it right beneath my title as that’s where is it mostly placed. Also, the background image I used is a medium shot which all college magazines use; this therefore makes it look very specialist.

Differences comparing my magazine and other professional magazines: I put a small sentence at the bottom of my cover page which not all professional magazines use; however, I thought I would attract a lot more potential readers. Also, the first headline I used on the left is ‘10+ ways to help you revise’, I made the ‘10+’ font size bigger than the ‘ways to help you revise’ size as it creates a positive effect on the readers as it makes the ‘10+’ stand out however, not all professional magazines use it which makes it unique and draws attention to the potential audiences.

Additionally, If I were to do this magazine again; I would of changed my chose of colour of my headlines and make it stand out a bit more or make it more readable, because mostly the colours I used was black and white, however, I could have made my colour of my headlines more colourful and thought of an appropriate colour. Also, I would have made the headlines not overlap the front cover image; because this makes it look unprofessional.

Also, If I had more time to complete this task, I would have used Photoshop to change the background by cutting the image and importing it to another page in photoshop, then blending a darker shade background with the main image, making it look more realistic and professional.

Finally, if I would of stretched the subtitle at the bottom of the magazine; “The magazine recommended by the Ealing council”. To make it focus on it more so it would draw in more potential readers however, not too stretched as it wouldn’t look as professional as it should.