Preliminary evaluation

Before I made my College magazine I explored a few different designs and ideas till I found a style I liked and suited the style of the given audience. I started with the title, I wanted something catchy and fun that related to college life at Priestly. I toyed around with some titles like ‘Knowledge of the College’, ‘Crashin’ in the Crescent’, ‘Crescent Moon’, and ‘Wicked Wicked!’ etc. In the end I went with ‘Crashin’ in the Crescent’ as it was funny and catchy and relates to the Priestley students.

The most important thing in a magazine is the content and articles inside, the main features from this featured on the cover to attract people into buying the magazine. Seeing as it was the beginning of the year it seemed fitting that there would be articles for new students to help them in their first few days at college. This is where I thought of the idea of ‘First Day Tips’, what to do in your first lessons, what to bring, what to do in your free periods etc. I also thought of a few other articles for example ‘Besting the Bullies’ but where it gave good advise it doesn’t give the best impression of the college.

It was a new experience designing a cover for a magazine so sketching some ideas helped me with my final design, I also took inspiration from January 2010 issue of ‘Rolling Stones’ magazine. It is such an iconic magazine from its mast head font to its cover stars so I took inspiration from that and merged it with my concept sketches.

Using Adobe Photoshop CS5 made it very easy to create a magazine cover, the vast use of the tool allowed me to create anything I could think of. I like how it turned out but I know it could have been a lot better, but as a newcomer to Photoshop I think it was the best I could do at that time.

The overall outcome of my cover is really good; I like the flow of the text and the colours throughout it. I think the picture fits the magazine as it depicts the social and friendly environments of Priestley College. Looking back on it, if I were to change anything it would be the layout of my contents page, I think it’s good but it could have been better by what I put on it and the design I went for. If I were to do it again I wouldn’t have had such a big picture as the main focus and even out the ratio of words: picture, but I do like the fonts and styles of the txt, by using a drop shadow on the sub title font I made it look more like ‘Rolling Stones’ font but still maintain the magneto style. I think it was good to incorporate the use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube showing the social networking connections between the college, students and staff. Using the puff at the top will catch the eye of the reader because it is different from the rest of the cover and when people read it and discover if they buy the magazine they would also get a free pencil case, incentives are great for attracting people into buying a product thus this should help shift more copies of my magazine.