Evaluation

Evaluation

 

For my work I have created a front cover for a college magazine. To prepare myself I looked at already existing college magazines to get an idea on what an ideal college magazine would look like. I also looked at existing, popular magazines that can be bought worldwide to compare them to college magazines. In particular, I looked at Vogue magazine. Vogue magazine is a fashion magazine only aimed at a specific audience (wealthy women, teenager girls, etc.). The overall appearance was completely diverse compared to the college magazines. The layout of Vogue was very clean and used minimal colours – a very common colour combination was black, white and another couple of colours which suit the image or season in which the magazine was published. The college magazines were a lot brighter as they were aimed at both male and female students, whereas Vogue is aimed primarily at upper-class women. The college magazines however did contain the same conventions (e.g. Masthead, cover lines, image, barcode, date, edition, colours and selling line).

I wanted my magazine to appeal to college students but still look sophisticated – just like Vogue. This was very difficult as Vogue doesn’t need to do much in terms of editing to make their magazine stand out as it is so popular that people will buy it regardless; but with my college magazine I had to style the conventions more carefully so that the front cover caught the reader’s eye in a positive and attractive way. To do this, I considered using bright colours that complimented each other well. I tried many different colours to start with but a lot of them were unsuccessful. Firstly, I tried using an orange background with blue text. I thought this would look great as blue and orange are complimentary colours that stand out against each other, which is bound to catch the reader’s eye… however; I was wrong. It did stand out, but not in a flattering way. It looked very unprofessional and unappealing; almost tacky to a certain degree. I had to change this immediately. After playing around with a variation of colours and patterns I decided that a gradient black and blue background with blue, white and orange text looked the most attractive and pleasing. The colours all complimented each other very well while standing out without being too over the top or messy. I also chose to put a transparent pattern on top of the background colour to modernise the magazine slightly and make it more appealing to the younger audience.

For the main image, I wanted to use something that represented the college in a positive way while complimenting the colour scheme and relating to the main cover line. I took a few pictures around the college of the buildings and different spots where people like to go to work or socialise with their friends in their free time, although none of these images were used. I found that they weren’t powerful enough and didn’t stand out or show what the college was really about. Luckily, my friend Kate was kind enough to let me take a medium close up picture of her holding her work folders and looking happily at the camera. Medium close ups and close ups with the model slightly smiling are a very common position to often be seen on the front cover of Vogue. The picture of Kate I took suited the colour theme perfectly (by chance) as she was wearing a blue jumper and blue jeans with a black and white coat. Her outfit was also very appropriate and ideal for a college student. The fact that she looks happy and is holding her work in her hands represents the students in a positive way. I think that the image is very simple, yet effective and it also helps lure in new students as it creates a good first impression just by looking at it. In Photoshop I created a border around the image of Kate and altered the colours using the selective colour option to make it stand out and compliment the colour scheme to an even greater extent.

In terms of conventions I didn’t change much from what Vogue had appeared to have used, although I did make some additions to make it appeal to male and female students even further. I made sure that my main cover line overlapped the main image as the story related to the main image. I chose the story carefully as I wanted it to be interesting but relevant. My main cover line is ‘New students more ambitious than ever’. This appeals to possible future students as they will see the college as having a good, hard-working reputation and have their mind set on coming here in the future. It could also make the other students want to work harder to live up to the expectations that the college has. One of the magazine’s smaller cover lines is also talking about students’ success which also helps support the other two connotations from before – making students want to live up to the expectations and making new students want to come to Wyke to do well. For the masthead I thought it would be effective if I used alliteration as it is more catchy and easier for people to remember. With it being a college magazine, it wouldn’t be a problem for it to be a weekly magazine as new information is constantly occurring, whereas if Vogue was to be weekly it could lose a lot of money due to the price and lack of changes in the fashion industry. After thinking about these points I settled with the name ‘Wyke Weekly’ and put it in a bold, blue font as the masthead. I included a small black border around all of the text used on the magazine to make it stand out more against the background. I also thought the use of the colour blue was a good idea as the colour blue is often associated with confidence which is exactly what we want the students to be. To make the reader want to buy the magazine even more I included an offer on the front page. Everyone loves offers (especially students!) and it makes it even more sought after and intriguing since the offer is exclusive to Wyke students.  Overall, I made sure that the cover lines were relevant to the students and appeal to them on a large scale. Eventually, I added the selling line, date, edition and price. I placed all of these around the masthead as I noticed from research that almost all magazines put this information there. This is so that is doesn’t go ignored as it is important information but a lot smaller than the rest of the text as it doesn’t need to catch the reader’s as much as conventions like the cover lines do. Placing it next to the masthead makes it almost impossible to ignore as the masthead is so large and bright. The selling line also helps entice the reader because it gains their trust and could be the final thing that makes them take the plunge into buying the magazine when they were possibly only considering it beforehand.

Overall, I think that my magazine looks professional and stands out to its target audience, without only appealing to one group of people. It also creates a positive representation and perceives the college as a happy, hard-working and great place to be with a lot of success. I have also used a lot of connotation in terms of colours, image and cover lines. I found that my research helped me to a vast extent as I knew what was expected of a college magazine and what I shouldn’t do to make it be perceived or represented negatively.