Evaluation of my magazine front page
Overall, I am happy with the
way my magazine cover looks, I feel as though it suits my target audience -
sixth formers.
When choosing my design, I
looked at various magazine covers for inspiration, including fashion magazines
such as Elle, and music magazines such as NME. Both of these magazine covers
both had a main focus on the front- a model. The fashion magazine had a photograph
of Emma Watson and the music magazine a close up photograph of Amy Winehouse.
Even though I loved these magazine designs I felt that only having one model
for my 6th from magazine wouldn’t work terribly well, as a 6th
from should be a community and I wanted to use a photograph that portrayed
this. So, instead I used individuals from the actual 6th from to
gather together and have there photograph taken. I also noticed on both the
fashion and music magazine were always legible, text never overlapped onto the
pictures. The presentation for each magazine always looked attractive and well
organized. For my final response to look like this, I produced a plan before I
actually made my magazine.
From my research, I found that
sixth formers are all interested in particular topics despite them having a
wide range of individual preferences as well. The majority of them, wanted a
sixth form magazine to include, sporting achievements, academic achievements,
competitions and articles on reducing stress, managing work load and upcoming
events within the sixth form. Many of these ideas featured on the front cover
of my magazine, I ensured that I used different sized fonts depending on the
importance of the feature or article. I also tried to include articles which
could be more general and not so specific to ‘education’ as I think sixth
formers sometimes feel as though school magazines over emphasize academic based
articles, so I decided to have a alternative article every month. This
mouth would be on fashion. What not to wear!
As 6th from students don’t have to wear a specific uniform I
thought that having a not to wear page would be suitable.
I chose my title to be Down Time as I thought it was a good
pun as the school is called “The Downs”. I wanted to make the title
eye-catching so I made the font bolder and bigger then all the other headings
and tag lines.
When choosing my slogan, I
wanted something that would be memorable. I avoided using the same slogan as ‘The
Downs School’s’ as I thought this would ensure that the magazine was separated
from the whole school and was specifically aimed at sixth form students. My
slogan is “ if you believe you will achieve” I felt this worked well with the
main schools slogan but also made it more unique for the sixth form.
My cover photo will change for
every issue as I feel this will make people want to pick up the magazine and
sixth form will be able to distinguish between copies. My original ideas were
that I would have sixth formers playing sport, socialising or learning. If
their was a specific sporting achievement by an individual student I thought I
could have them as my main cover photo. I thought this would be good as it
would allow the sixth form to see other student’s academic and sporting
achievements, in and outside of school. It may also
When I finally decided the
final layout for my 6th form magazine I chose to have a photograph
of a group of 6th formers as I felt it really resembled the 6th
from community. I couldn’t choose the outfits of my models as in 6th
from individuals wear what they want, however I selected 5 boys dressed
appropriately and 1 girl dressed appropriately to give off a good example to
the buyers of my magazine. I wanted to ensure that my magazine was not only
aimed at my own individual preferences but also at the different personalities
and friendships of the 6th from. I think this would easily be
achieved as the front cover would vary from issue to issue.
I am happy with my front cover
design, however for my main course work portfolio I definitely need to manage
my time better. This will allow me to spend more time on actually designing my
magazine instead of spending time on researching and analysing. I think that when I am able to use the photo
editing software it will enable me to experiment and create new and innovative
designs that will allow me to produce a higher quality design of a magazine
cover.
