College magazine Prelim Evaluation
For my Prelim task I planned and made a front cover and a contents page for a college magazine for Farnham College on Photoshop. As my I have designed a college magazine my audience is therefore students, the age range of my audience and readers will therefore be 16-18 and will be in the social economic groups , C1, C2 and D. I designed my magazine pages to appeal to college students. I did this by making the layout very simple and visually exciting by using a large cover photo and minimal bold exciting headlines. I decided to call my college magazine ‘College Weekly’ as this is straight to the point and ‘weekly’ stand for the fact this magazine is published weekly for college students. My target audience for this magazine therefore is college students aged between 16 and 18.
I decided to name my magazine 'College Weekly' as it is simple, memorable and suggest that is both a college magazine and it is issued weekly. For my main front cover image i used a student sat at a computer with a Farnham College logo on the screen which automatically connotes this is a Farnham College magazine. I also chose a picture from my shoot where the model is looking at a direct gaze and is smiling; I chose this photograph as it connotes both happiness in college work and a good social community in the college, along with friendly students such as this model. The models smile is also inviting for students to read this magazine, her casual dress-code of a checked shirt and bangles connotes a laid back attitude and therefore suggests to the reader that this magazine is mostly based on the 'social' side of college life.
This photograph also fills up the whole of the front cover and acts as a background, I think this has made my prelim front cover look like an actual magazine front cover. However, the photograph I chose also has some bad points, as I discovered when editing cover-lines and headlines over the top of this image background. The photograph is very busy as it has a lot of objects and colours and I therefore found it hard to place the cover-lines in places where they showed up against the background. To avoid this problem I could taken my photograph against a simpler backdrop, surrounding or setting to make my cover-lines more visible or I could have edited my photograph in some way to make this possible, such as blurring the surrounding area around the model.
The typography I used for my front cover was in capital bold so it is eye-catching, the uses of red also contributes to this. On my Contents page I used black and white typography in the contents columns to create a contrast against the surrounding red colour scheme. I used a continuous red colour scheme on each page as it reflects the college logo and overall makes the pages stand out.
This magazine is mainly specified for students, rather than adults and parents as its contents is of college social events and information relevant to college students. This is connoted by the articles and colloquial language used to address the target audience of students in a non formal and chatty way.
The technologies I used to create this magazine included using digital cameras and mac computers which I has previously used. For my editing software I used Photoshop which I have also used to edit photographs, however I had never used Photoshop to create a page such as a magazine. The skills I discovered and developed from experimenting with Photoshop while created my prelim magazine pages I will develop further and used them when creating my music magazine pages. For example I have learnt how to insert layers and shapes as well as text and how to edit it in different way such as having a drop shadow to make it look more visually exciting and professional.
However I will still need to develop these basic skills further in order to create a successful main task such as choosing typography that suits my magazine genre, how to insert cover-lines in appropriate and professional places and learning more about the editing process in Photoshop in particular using layers as these confused me slightly when editing my prelim magazine pages.
In conclusion, I am happy with my prelim task as I feel I applied certain important professional features such as a large cover photo, columns and a simple colour scheme to give it a good overall visual magazine look. However, I need to improve what I have learnt and created from my prelim pages, I will take my learnt skills and improve, develop and apply them to my process of designing and making my main task music magazine pages.
I decided to name my magazine 'College Weekly' as it is simple, memorable and suggest that is both a college magazine and it is issued weekly. For my main front cover image i used a student sat at a computer with a Farnham College logo on the screen which automatically connotes this is a Farnham College magazine. I also chose a picture from my shoot where the model is looking at a direct gaze and is smiling; I chose this photograph as it connotes both happiness in college work and a good social community in the college, along with friendly students such as this model. The models smile is also inviting for students to read this magazine, her casual dress-code of a checked shirt and bangles connotes a laid back attitude and therefore suggests to the reader that this magazine is mostly based on the 'social' side of college life.
This photograph also fills up the whole of the front cover and acts as a background, I think this has made my prelim front cover look like an actual magazine front cover. However, the photograph I chose also has some bad points, as I discovered when editing cover-lines and headlines over the top of this image background. The photograph is very busy as it has a lot of objects and colours and I therefore found it hard to place the cover-lines in places where they showed up against the background. To avoid this problem I could taken my photograph against a simpler backdrop, surrounding or setting to make my cover-lines more visible or I could have edited my photograph in some way to make this possible, such as blurring the surrounding area around the model.
The typography I used for my front cover was in capital bold so it is eye-catching, the uses of red also contributes to this. On my Contents page I used black and white typography in the contents columns to create a contrast against the surrounding red colour scheme. I used a continuous red colour scheme on each page as it reflects the college logo and overall makes the pages stand out.
This magazine is mainly specified for students, rather than adults and parents as its contents is of college social events and information relevant to college students. This is connoted by the articles and colloquial language used to address the target audience of students in a non formal and chatty way.
The technologies I used to create this magazine included using digital cameras and mac computers which I has previously used. For my editing software I used Photoshop which I have also used to edit photographs, however I had never used Photoshop to create a page such as a magazine. The skills I discovered and developed from experimenting with Photoshop while created my prelim magazine pages I will develop further and used them when creating my music magazine pages. For example I have learnt how to insert layers and shapes as well as text and how to edit it in different way such as having a drop shadow to make it look more visually exciting and professional.
However I will still need to develop these basic skills further in order to create a successful main task such as choosing typography that suits my magazine genre, how to insert cover-lines in appropriate and professional places and learning more about the editing process in Photoshop in particular using layers as these confused me slightly when editing my prelim magazine pages.
In conclusion, I am happy with my prelim task as I feel I applied certain important professional features such as a large cover photo, columns and a simple colour scheme to give it a good overall visual magazine look. However, I need to improve what I have learnt and created from my prelim pages, I will take my learnt skills and improve, develop and apply them to my process of designing and making my main task music magazine pages.
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