Images in top

corners
Large
mastheads
Cover lines
along left
hand side
Main image
close to
hotspots to
the right.
Barcode
Puff
Cover comparison
Larger fonts for
important
information
Rule of thirds
Evaluation of Cover
On my front cover my main image is a medium close up shot and my models face
is in the top left hotspot to ensure it stands out. Also in the top right corner I
have put an image of the Sixth form college Solihull logo, because that is the
bases of my colour scheme green, purple and white. This is why I planned to
have green in the background of the main image, which I also purposefully
edited so that the green was more saturated and therefore noticeable. The
masthead is in a large font at the top of the page and I chose black so that it is
solid and easy to read. I chose a different font for my masthead (Market Deco
from dafont.com) and cover lines (Rockwell extra bold.) But then to keep
continuity, on the contents page I kept the place and font of the masthead the
same. All fonts other than the masthead are the same font, and I tried to keep
them slightly similar to the college font making everything connected.
In addition because it is a student magazine genre I followed the theme of nature
and green with the use of puffs that are flower shaped. The black and green
stand out from each other so they are eye catching and help make sure the black
at the top of the page is replicated at the bottom. Similarly with my additional
cover lines they are purple echoing the purple at the top right of the page.
Cover lines are relevant to a students needs and what they will see inside the
magazine and on the contents page. However, for the main cover line I made the
alliteration in Top Ten Tips bolder and larger so that its the first thing you look
at and should hopefully mean that a new student could read it, see its relevance
to them and pick one up.
Comparing the cover to my draft I see that they are very similar. No extreme
change, though I was planning on having each capitol T in the main cover line a
different colour but now I think that would have made the page to messy.
Contents page comparison
Title like on
cover
Contents title
Contents
list
Photos
relevant to
articles
Grab
Quote
Rule of thirds
Evaluation of contents
On my contents page I have kept the mast head and logo for the Sixth Form in the
same place as on my cover so that they work as a pair. Then I have made the
contents title the same font as the mast head while also making the font larger so
it is clear what the page is about.
For the layout I used rule of thirds so have three columns of information and
continued that theme with three photos. My colour scheme of black, green and
purple is also continued onto this page linking again to the college logo in the top
right corner.
Each photo (front of school, sports field and student & teacher) has connotations
and relate to articles planned to be written did , however I now realise that I did
not add anchorage text to the photos (a page number for which article it matched
to) and if I had the related article would be more obvious and less confusing to the
reader. On the left column I have a contents list of all the page articles and
corresponding numbers, making the reading of the magazine easier. I chose a grab
quote that could be seen within the article for the centre column. But it also fits
the genre of magazine which is; helping, inspiring and motivating students. Finally
on the right I added to school contact information and address, as this would be
helpful to the reader and further keeps the link between school and magazine
which is needed to fit the genre.
Comparing it to my plan however, though most is similar I did make some changes.
Such as, I had another caption stating this magazine can be found by the main
office or in the refectory but I removed it to ensure the font size of the other
captions, particularly the contents list, would be sufficiently big enough to be read
and followed easily. Also I had removed this caption so that there would be room
to make the photos bigger, easier to see. If I hadn't taken the text out I feel that the
contents would have been two crowded.
Technology used
When making the magazine cover and contents I used and developed many different forms of technology.
The first bit of technology I used was when transferring the photos on the Still Digital camera onto my own
college area through a USB port so that they could be saved and used again if necessary.
Also one bit of technology I used a lot was Photoshop. Firstly, I needed to inset my photos by going to edit
place and adding my photo. Then, for example with my main image, when I was resizing it so that it fit into
the A4 background I made sure I held down the shift key while using the free transform tool. This makes sure
that the whole image is resized, not jut stretching it one way, making sure the picture doesn'tt get warped.
I also used it for my cover lines because I was able to change my secondary cover lines to purple so that that
could be added to my colour scheme (based off of the collage logo) and look more coherent when I used it
on the contents page. I again used the text tool for writing on the contents page as I was able to resize them
easily so they were clear and readable. Photoshop allowed me to add shapes that worked as puffs, I chose a
flower shape to fit with my main image background of nature, but also let me resize them easily. Using layers
in Photoshop is very useful as it means you can go back to previous adjustments and change them again and
again.
Then for my main image I used the adjustment tools and polygonal lasso tool to cut out the outline of my
model, invert it, and then was able to make the green of the background more saturated. But then I was able
to go back and make my model brighter and more defined so she stood out amongst the text and colour.
The final bit of technology was dafont.com, where I chose a font and added the text I needed before taking
a screen shot copying and pasting it to the page and using the crop tool. Once I have the text and minimal
background I used the Magic want tool to select the unwanted white and delete it so that only the black
text is there. I used this website for my mast head on both cover and contents so they would relate to each
other well.