My finished College Magazine

Analysis of my front cover

In this media project we had to create a front cover and a contents page. In this part of the analyis i will look at the front cover of my project. Firstly i chose to name my front cover padlock. I chose this as it is a name of a common tool that most college students use in every day life. I also chose it as i felt that there was alot i could do with this in terms of design and background. The first thing i had to do to create this front cover was to take a picture. I took a picture of a boy standing at some open lockers. This was so that me giving away a free padlock would give the reader an extra insentive to buy the magazine as if not it would be rendered useless. I then had to choose a colour scheme to use for the magazine. I decided to use a gold colour to emphasise that the title was padlock as this is the general colour of padlocks. Gold is also a colour that you would associate with prestige and class so it also brings this to the magazine. To contrast this i used a strong red colour to try and bring out the danger that you could possess by leaving your lockers open. I also decided to use a red cross at the top of the page to show that a padlock insures that you cannot enter and that it is wrong to do so. Choosing to have the chain hanging from the 'O' was also to show something being broken into to try and fit in with the rest of the magazine. Also, the font that i used is quite 'blocky', therefore making it have a feel of a padlock about it.

Analysis of my Contents Page

The contents page i used has a more simple format to try to make it seem a little more formal so that it wonot take away from the information that it's presenting to the audience. The first thing that i decided is that i'd have a plain white background. This was so that the writing would stand out on it and so again it wouldn't take away from any important information. I chose to use a red and black font for the writing on the contents page. I did this as black stands out very well on the white background and red also stands out on the white background whilst contrasting the black. I also stayed with the red from the colour scheme on the front cover. The only real design technique i used was to have the 'Padlock' and 'Magazine' font tight together. I did this to give it a feeling of it being locked together to again revert back to the title.

What i liked and disliked about my magazine

The main thing that i liked about my magazine was the design of the front cover. I feel like it suited the name padlock well with: the 'blocky' writing, the golden colour and the broken chain hanging from the letter 'O' all made the magazine title seem credible.

What i disliked about my magazine was my contents page. Although i created the contents page with the idea of making it formal so that the information would not be overlooked, i still felt as though it should have been a bit more jokey to aim towards my target ausience a little more.

What new skills i've learnt fron the preliminary Task

I think that the main thing that i have learnt from this preliminary task is a better understanding of Photoshop. Learnt how to use some of the tools much better e.g. the chain round the letters is something i wouldn't have been able to do before this task. I also got a better idea of time management. I realised that i need to be quicker and spend more time on getting the important things on rather than wasting time with extra additives. The last thing that i realised is that i need to stick with the same theme in the front cover and the contents page as in this project they look very different.