Evaluation of finished products

Before starting the production of my magazine cover I first decided to look at the common conventions of various popular magazines such as Empire, GQ and Kerrang, it was clear that a central image was a common convention. My magazine breaks tis convention as my main image is slightly to the right, this break in convention however gives it its own unique style. I did not want my magazine to look to busy or overload it with text. This often gives the illusion of a more interesting and diverse content. However overloading the contents page with text would not of complimented the use of bold colours, the magazine has a very simple but bold style which made it easier to stick to a colour palette. The colour palette I used was red, blue and purple, this worked well with the colours of clothes my model was wearing. The masthead font originally the same font as the rest of the cover, however it became clear that it simply did not stand out or had no expression or taste. I later changed it to the font seen below, using multiple fonts was definitely not a common convention however as it was only used on the masthead I feel as though it was acceptable. The size of the masthead does follow common convention as it takes up at least 1//8th of the cover. It is clear and there are no distractions behind it like seen in the Bodmin College college magazine.

I wanted to make sure that my cover appeals and represents the the social group and age group that the mass of students fit into, simply because this is the primary target audience of the magazine. Looking at my survey monkey results the age group is 14-16 however this was simply because of the limitation of who was available to fill out the questionnaire at this time. Realistically the age group would be from 11-19 as this covers all ages from students who attend the school. I think the cover has a very positive feel to it, which goes against stereotypes towards youths, many regard youths as disrespectful, depressed and trouble makers. It goes against Stanley Hall's model written in 1904 which states "all young people go through some degree of emotional and behavioural upheaval" My cover represents a very positive attitude towards higher education. The stories in the magazine are linked to this positive attitude as they are all about recognising achievement. It was important to also remember the secondary target audience, parents of students. They are going to want to know what their son/daughter is doing at school, or even opportunities that are available. I also took this into consideration when choosing the colour palette, it had to aesthetically appealing, and not to contrasting or order to deter the secondary target audience from taking and interest in it. The layout of the magazine does break the common convention as the so called centre image is actually slightly to the right, however as this is not a commercial magazine I feel as though this gave me an excuse to break convention, looking at the cover I feel as though the break in convention paid off. The layout is not confusing and the font is of an appropriate size in order to make it clear to the reader.

The typography of the cover flows well with the basic and simple layout and design of the magazine, I thought that if i used a font that was too complex or intricate then it would contrast too much and look terrible with the block and basic colours. There is not masses of information on the cover page as I did not want it to look busy however I still wanted it to look as though the magazine was not struggling to find interesting stories. The text is not collaborated all in one particular area of the magazine, I used the so called sweet spot, the top left, in order to highlight a particular interest or story which again follows common conventions. I again had to look at my primary target audience and decided not to overload the cover with text as it may even deter them from taking an interest in the magazine an overload of text may overwhelm someone who is simply looking to read leisurely.

The main image has obviously broken a common convention, my reasoning for this is explained above, however, the image itself is obviously of a student or at least someone who fits the target audience. It would not be fit for purpose if it the image was of someone who was completely irrelevant to the topic of the magazine or the target audience. The images in the bottom left of the cover are there to accompany the stories above them, it makes the story look more interesting and adds colour to the cover itself.

Overall I think that my cover page represents the needs of my target audience well. This was because I used the common conventions of popular magazines such as a clear and sizeable masthead, a main image, even if the positioning of the the image breaks the conventions I think this was needed as the simple design makes it hard to give the front cover a sense of individuality. This may be seen as a fault in the covers design, however it would be something for me to look at in future productions. The cover gives insight to the consent inside and I think it is fit for purpose.


I also looked at the common conventions of contents pages from the magazines, GQ, Empire and Kerrang. One thing that really stood out was that these magazines had a "features" section in which the most interesting stories are highlighted. I decided to include this in my contents page in order to follow this convention.

I wanted the design of the contents page to be consistent and contrast well with the front cover. I used the same colour palette that was used on the front cover in order to achieve this constancy. My first design had the word "contents" at the top, however this was a poor decision as people don't need reminding that a contents page is the page after the cover.

The typography used again is very basic and follows the same theme as the cover, because of the bold colours used I did not want to make the text to complicated as it would contrast terribly. The font used in the features is very bold and also underline simply to emphasise that it is a feature and is the main highlight of the contents page. The word '"features" uses the same font as the word "student view" found on my cover page. This again was used in order to achieve some sort of consistency between both the cover page and the contents page.

The images used on my contents page are simply students at the college, this is used on order to highlight who the target audience is, however looking at them now the pictures lack action, they are inanimate and simply boring as they are just looking at the camera, given a second opportunity I would of used images of people doing something. The images are all the same size as I did not want one person to be a highlight as the real highlight of the contents page should be where to find the contents of the magazine and also the features of the magazine.

It was harder to make the contents page appealing to the target audience as there are many common conventions of contents pages however many magazines simply use their own unique design. There was not much in the way of comparison as usually the contents page uses the theme of the magazine in order to shape the page itself.

Overall I think that the use of consistency made the contents page work well with the cover, I think that the contents page is fit for purpose for use in a college magazine. As mentioned though there would definitely be some changes that I would make to the images given a second opportunity, overall I think that looking at the individual aspects of the magazine it is hard to find where I have strayed from the common conventions of contents page production.