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Magazine front cover and contents page analysis

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1) What Works?Front Cover:

I think mainly the part of my front cover that works the best is my mast head, firstly the title ‘College Comfort’ relates to college life and students, (the readers) Also I think the way that the models head overlaps the masthead adds a composition to the cover although it is overlapping the masthead you can still understand what it says. Lastly I like the contribution of the pink bow (identifier) to my masthead, all relating to the overall image presentation of the cover.

Another aspect of my cover that I believe works well Is the different colours of writing that overlap the image on the cover and the background of the cover.I think this gives the cover variation and adds something different and intriguing to the cover also.

1)What works?Contents Page:

One of the main things I think that works well on my contents page is the colour separation of ‘Cover Stories’ and ‘Regulars’. I have done this by putting the cover stories in the red box and the regulars in the grey area, this gives the readers easy navigation of the contents.

Another part of my contents page which I believe worked well is in the bottom right hand corner where there is a minimized picture of my model on from the front cover.This gives the readers a taster of what’s to come later in the magazine, it also adds visual aspects to the contents.

2)What doesn’t work?Front Cover:

In my opinion something that doesn’t work so well on my front cover is the positioning of the barcode and the information around it (the price and the date) the reason I think this is because it doesn’t really seem to be in fitting with the rest of the presentation of the magazines cover, the writing looks too big and the barcode looks unprofessional. Given the choice these would definitely be some things I would change.

Another aspect of my front cover which I didn’t ‘not work’ but could definitely be improved on was this blank area. It seems to appear that something from it is missing, maybe it needs another headline or image, again this would be something if doing the cover again that I would change and re-evaluate.

2) What doesn’t work?Contents page:

The main thing about my contents page that I think doesn’t work very well is the positioning of the writing ‘College Comfort Contents’ the reason It doesn’t work very well is because it look as though it has all been shoved into one corner, and then there is all that free space to the right of it that could have been occupied with one of the headings. Again if re doing my magazine (contents page) this would be one of the first things I would change.

Another aspect of my contents page which I thought didn’t really work very well, or could have worked better was how the top of the models head met the writing in the ‘regulars’ section (circled in black on the image). This appears quite messy and blunt possible off putting to readers, it could have been feathered slightly so that it blended better with the text.

3) What was hard?Front Cover:

One of the main things I found difficult with my front cover was getting the models head to overlap the mast head yet still allow the masthead to be readable and stand out similar to the main image of the model. However after playing around with the positioning of the masthead and the model I got to a composition I was satisfied with, yet when reviewing my cover it became evident this was something I spent a lot of my time on, therefore found harder.

Another part of my cover which I found hard was changing the different colours of the letters in order to stand out more on their backgrounds. This proved difficult due to altering layers and making sure that the colour of the letters changed and nothing else on the cover. A lot of my time when constructing the cover was spent on this area of it.

What was hard?Contents page:

The thing I found most difficult with my contents page was finding somewhere to add my models image, adding it somewhere that it didn’t disrupt and take attention away from anything else happening on the page yet still stood out in it’s on right. I’ve not added it to the bottom right hand corner which I found suitable as no text is overlapping it yet the text that is near it can still be clearly seen and the picture itself has it’s own area to be noticed.

4) What was easy?Front cover:

The main part of the front cover which I found easy was the dark shadow around the model, It was easily done on the ‘Layer style’ of Photoshop yet adds an effortless standing out factor to the model.

Adding an ‘Identifier’ to my masthead also proved quite easy on my front cover. Although proving easy it also adds an edge to my design and gives readers instant indication of the magazine.

4) What was easy?Contents Page:

After experiment with changing certain parts of my text to different colours when It came to my contents page I was already used to the process, therefore changing the parts of my ‘Contents’ heading from red to black in areas proved quite easy.

The overall process of adding Numbers and headings to my contents page was obviously very straight forward. I spent the least time of working on my contents page doing this.

5) What have I learnt?Front cover and Contents Page:

Mostly what I have learnt whilst doing both my magazine front cover and my contents page is a better understanding and technique of using Photoshop. Here I have circled in black a few aspects of both the pieces that I have excelled with when using Photoshop, text colour changing and picture editing mainly, yet also things such as adding identifiers and bold texts as headings and mastheads.

If I had all the money in the world what would I change?

If given the money to change things on my front cover some of the main alterations I could make mainly would be to the main picture, although I am happy with the final outcome I thing a more colourful or even a series of picture would of caught the interest of the cover more. Also If given a chance to change I would alter the text type of the masthead, making it more ‘studenty’ appealing to the target audience of readers more so.

The first thing I would alter with the contents page If given a chance would be the amount of Regulars on the regular section, I feel there is space going to waste where more sub-headings could have been added, avoiding contact with the model they could have gone around her to the left. Another thing I would change would be the empty space to the top right of the page, I feel this is occupying valuable space that just isn’t being used.

Magazine Comparisons

The first magazine I would highly compare to mine, visually especially is ‘bay Fashion’ magazine, It resembles many of the same characterises to my magazine, the black and white image and red Masthead for example. Also on the second bay magazines cover it has quite a lot of sub-headings similar to the cover of my magazine.

The second magazine which I have used in comparison to mine is ‘QP’ magazine, Similarly with the use of black and white photography for the model and black and red writing for the cover. I have also chosen this one because similar to my magazine it is busy and has quite a lot of sub-headings, as does mine.