Front Cover and Contents Page

Front Cover Evaluation

What Works? I think as a whole my front cover works

because it follows a house style with the

consistent colour of blue taken from what the

person in the lead image is wearing making

it look more professional. However I think it

works as a good magazine because it looks

like what you would expect. For example it

includes: An identifier in the left third to help

if it was on a shelf with other magazines. A

good masthead to tell you what the name of

the magazine is with a line underneath

identifying that it’s a college magazine. A

decent lead line to get the reader easily

interested in what's inside. A couple of strap

lines to tell you more about what's inside and

make the cover more interesting. A barcode,

date and price to make the magazine look

more professional and like an everyday

magazine as well as specially for college

students. Left

Third

Identifier Masthead

Lead

Line

Strap

Line

Barcode,

Date and

Price

…continued

I think the lead image for this magazine cover works well because it

suits the type of magazine as it’s for college students and would have

more fashion in the magazine than anything else. As it’s a young

student it lets the readers relate to the image and gives an idea of

what’s inside.

What I also like about the front cover is that the lead line follows the

arm of the lead image which fits it better and makes it look more

professional.

I think the masthead works because it fit’s the colours of

the top that the student is wearing, and it doesn’t have any

descenders therefore keeping a bold line without any

underlining. Also I think it makes it look more effective and

natural that it has a gradient because it looks softer and

more professional than a block colour for the font style.

What Doesn’t Work?

I think the overall front cover works however I

could have made it work better by changing the

size of the lead image or masthead so that the

head of the student is shown more as the

masthead covers quite a bit of the head up.

Also I could have made a better identifier so it

looks more professional and fitted the masthead

better. If I changed the colour so that it had a

gradient that may have worked better because it

would have matched however because of where

it is it may have made it look less professional

What was Difficult?

As most of what I did on the front page were

simple processes I didn’t find it very difficult,

however the main area I found hard was

creating the right gradient on the mast head.

Because I wanted the colour to suit the lead

image I had to make sure I had a suitable

colour as well as producing a gradient for

the masthead.

Also even though I didn’t find it hard when I

worked out how simple it was I found it hard

initially to get the barcode white and have

no background as the original barcode was

black with a white background which I

thought was less professional and didn’t suit

the magazine as well.

Suitable gradient to fit the colour of

the front cover

What was Easy?

Most of the techniques on the Front cover of the

magazine I had already used on the CD cover

therefore I found most of the production easy.

For example using fonts from ‘Da Font’ and taking the

background colour away using ‘colour range’ to make

them look more professional and typed straight on

rather than taken from a website.

Also changing the angles of the text so that it suited

the cover better and followed a house style.

It was also easy to edit the opacity of the background

shapes for the cover lines I used therefore making

them stand out a lot easier than if they were straight

on top of the lead image.

What have you learnt?

As I did the CD cover before this I learnt

the basic techniques when producing that

therefore I haven’t learnt as much as I

would have if I produced this first. However

I have learnt:

How to add Gradient to the text and

change the colour of the gradient to suit the

lead image therefore matching better and

looks more professional.

How to produce simple shapes and change

the colour and opacity of them to suit the

front cover better and look more

professional.

If you had all the time and money in the world what would you change?

If I had all the time and money I would

change the masthead because although it

suits the cover of the magazine and matched

the colours of the lead image I think it could

look more finished off and have a more

professional look. For instance the ‘U’ has

some rough edges where I have edited it

and this could have looked smoother.

Also I would think of other strap lines to fill

the cover more and a better lead line to suit

the magazine better as I don’t think the lead

line matches the type of magazine very well.

I would also think about using other fonts for

some of the texts like the word ‘WIN’ as I

don’t think it stands out very well and could

be bolder to make it more obvious.

Are there any magazines you can compare it to?

I can compare my magazine to the teen

magazine ‘Shout’ because it has a similar layout

in that there is lead image of a ‘young girl’ in this

a young celebrity. There it a bold masthead which

is full way across the top of the magazine.

However in Shout there is no identifier unlike my

magazine.

Also I have tried to keep my text to the side and

shape it around the lead image therefore showing

the lead image well, similarly to shout as they

have placed the strap lines and head lines to the

edges of the magazine so they stand out away

from the lead image.

I could also compare my magazine to a very

similar teen magazine ‘Mizz’ as it’s similar in style

to ‘Shout’

Contents Page Evaluation

What Works?I think overall my contents page works

because it follows a house style from the front

cover therefore you are able to relate it easily

back to the magazine. Also it follows the same

colours of the front cover of the magazine

making it suit this issue separately to any

more that would be produced it was a real

magazine.

I think it works because it includes all the

basics of a contents page as it includes: A title

identifying it as the contents page of which the

style would be copied to other pages creating

a house style. Good article names with text to

explain them. An image of the front cover so

the article names can be easily related to it

and the reader can tell it’s part of the same

magazine. Also it has a page number, issue

and title of the magazine at the bottom of the

page to create a house style and make it look

more professional.

TitleFront

Cover

image

Article namesPage Number, Issue

and Title of Magazine

…continuedI think the background image works in this

because it suits the magazine type as it is

of jewellery on a stand therefore has a

fashion aspect. Also I made the image

translucent therefore you can see text on it

much easier but still get some interest

from the background.

I also think the fact that I used a

handwritten font for the article names but

a sans serif front for the information

underneath works because it is easier to

read as the articles are small sections of

text.

I think as I followed the same colour

scheme on the contents page to the front

cover it helps to fit the magazine together

and make it look more professional.

However this may not apply to future

magazine if this was a real production.

What Doesn’t Work?I think overall the contents page does

work however although I think it works

I also think the articles font doesn’t

work because although they are single

lines and are bigger there is a lot of

them therefore fills the page up a lot

and is harder to read easily. Therefore

I could have picked a slightly easier

handwritten font to read therefore

making the contents page look more

professional.

I also think that there could have been

more images on the contents page so

it isn’t just full of text and it becomes

more interesting, because although t

includes the article names and

description it is all very the same and

becomes boring if you were to look

through all the article titles.

What was Difficult?As I had done the CD production first I

learnt a lot of the basic skills I needed to

create this therefore what I did I didn’t find

very difficult. However what I didn’t know

how to do was adding a drop shadow to

something to give the idea it is sitting away

from the page which I added to the image of

the front cover.

Although I didn’t find it difficult I found that

because I used a front for the article title

names from ‘Da Font’ I had to keep taking

away the background to make it look more

professional which I found annoying after a

while.

Also I found trying to get all the article titles

the same size was difficult as there was no

set font size therefore I had to use a grid to

try and get them all a similar size.

What was easy?

As I used most of the skills that I used

for the CD production I found most of the

contents page production easy as I used

the skills I had learnt before.

For example I used ‘Colour Range’ to

get the words off ‘Da font’ and take away

the white background caused by the

print screen off the website.

Also changing the opacity was easy

because I had already used this in

creating the translucent boxes for the

front cover so the text is easier to read

and stands out more.

What have you learnt?

Again as I produced the CD before I

used most of the skills I needed for

this production from that. However I

did learn how to add a drop shadow

to an image making it look like it’s on

top of the page or floating slightly

away from it.

If you had all the time and money in the world what would you change?

Overall I am happy with the contents page

however if I had all the time and money in

the world I would change the font of the

article names as I think they are hard to read

when there is a lot of them all on the same

page

Also I would add some more images to the

contents page as I think it would make the

readers more interesting and it wouldn’t look

as dull and boring as there would be more

colour to fill the page drawing the reader in

Finally I would think about changing it to a

double page spread because I think there

would be more room so that the article

names aren’t as packed in, but I could also

include snippets of the rest of the magazine

and add more images and detail.

Are there any magazines you can compare it to?

I can compare my contents page to the

‘Twenty Something’ Magazine I

researched for this production as it is

structured in a similar way as all the

articles on my cover. Also it includes an

image of what’s on the front cover which

you can easily relate to when looking at

the contents page.

Also it has some use of a handwritten

font, however I think this magazine has

used it better as it it’s used much and

stand out rather than being used for all

the article titles.