Research And Planning: College Magazine Analysis

College Magazine Analysis

When I started planning and designing my magazine I had to decide what colour and fonts I was going to use. I wanted to choose colours that related to college and that weren't too bright. I also had to take into consideration that I wanted both boys and girls to read the magazine and enjoy it so I couldn't be using lots of bright pinks or blues as that might have put them off reading it. Sticking to the 3 colour rule, I decided to use purple, white and black. These are very simple colours as I wanted to stick to the college theme and I thought that purple appeals to both boys and girls. I wanted to keep it simple and sophisticated as the target audience is students and not children. I think that the colours were an appropriate choice but red or green may have been a better choice because they are brighter and more appealing than purple because some people may find it boring and too plain. Also a lot of people associate red with college/university.

I think I chose an appropriate font and size for the magazine as it stood out on the front and is easy to see and read. If the text would have been too small then people would have been struggling to read it. I chose to use that font because it looks sophisticated and is very clear. If I would have used a 'swirly' font then it would not have matched the college theme and would also be very hard to read. I kept the font the same on both my front cover and my contents page so that it is consistent and professional. The size of the masthead is clearly bigger than the cover lines so that the readers can tell that that is the title and they can differentiate the name of the magazine from the cover lines.

I chose to use a student as a model to make the college magazine more personal to the readers as some of them may know who it is. After taking many photographs I narrowed it down to about 6 appropriate possible photographs for the contents and cover. The reason I chose that particular photograph was because of the position and pose the model was in. I think that I could have edited the picture a lot better because the edges of the photo are very rough and bumpy. Also her hair is two different colours on the contents page and cover.

I think that I could have added another cover story as having only 3 on the front cover looks like there wont be much content inside the magazine. I could have added a competition or quiz cover line to attract people to it more. 

In conclusion I think that it is very clear that the contents page and the cover page are part of the same magazine. I used the same model, colours, fonts and style for both pages. If I could do this magazine again I would defiantly take all of my critical points into consideration to improve it.