Project Evaluation

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 6^th from magazine wouldn’t work terribly well, as a 6^th from should be a community and I wanted to use a photograph that portrayed this. So, instead I used individuals from the actual 6^th 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 6^th 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 6^th form magazine I chose to have a photograph of a group of 6^th formers as I felt it really resembled the 6^th from community. I couldn’t choose the outfits of my models as in 6^th 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 6^th 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.