Winchester - A school Magazine.

As a practice for the AS Media Course I created a brief front cover and contents page for a school/college magazine.

This is my front cover: 

I think as a preliminary exercise and this being the first time I have ever used photoshop, this went quite well. The orange background, I find, really draws people in it's a fun interesting way to attract the audience. 

The audience for my magazine was teens of the ages 16-18 as the magazine is for a Sixth Form. 

I decided that the masthead should be 'THE WINCHESTER' because it was the first town that came to my head and I thought it had quite a catchy swing to the word. Also in the movie 'Shaun of the Dead' the pub is called "The Winchester" so I thought that might also appeal to the generation I am aiming the magazine at. 

The main cover line in this issue is "The Battle Of The Sexes". I could have used the word 'Genders' but I believe that the audience would be drawn to the word 'sexes' and make the magazine stand out from the others.

The sub-lines, "In and out, What's the trend?", "Take part in YOUR house events!" and "Win a School Trip Inside", sound intriguing and the colourfulness draws your eye towards it. Words like 'win' give the impression that if you buy the magazine you technically buy the chance to have the potential of winning something, this is commonly a key eye drawer.

"FREE PEN". This is a hot spot or puff which draws the eye in, the yellow and blue are quite clashy colours which make it all much more exciting, also the word 'FREE' sends messages to the mind, telling one to subconsciously buy it for material gain. Also the colour yellow is vibrant and will attract the viewer.

If I had had more time I would have made it look a bit more elegant. Right now the font looks a bit scruffy and there are lots of different types of fonts, also the slanted cover lines look a little tacky. I forgot to include a price which if it were a real magazine would be vital. 
I realised that the bra strap was still showing and so to over come this untidy image I cloned it away using other parts of the arm to cover it up. It still looks a bit messy but thats only under close analysis. In a proper magazine I would do my best to make it look proper.

This is my Contents page: 

My contents page has the same background colour as my front cover page and uses the same font for the title 'CONTENTS' and I also created a logo for "THE WINCHESTER" which is just a "W". Had I had more time I would have made a more interesting logo which I could have put on the front page as well. 

For both the front page and the cover page I gave the titles a shadow because otherwise the yellow would have looked too camouflaged in the orange background. So giving it a black shadow really brought it forward. The logo I did the other way round (so black with yellow shadow) because of the coloured square behind it otherwise it would also have looked far to samey along side the title. 

Using the same fonts as the ones I used on the front cover in attempt to keep the same house style. Had I done it again I would have used more similar fonts both on the contents page and the front cover because it looks too playful and slightly messy. 

The image I used was initially supposed to be on an article relating to a team winning a sport, but in the end I didn't include the article on either the front cover OR on the contents page. This was a bad thing to do because now I just have a random image of boys which have no relation to the magazine. 

Not only, if I had more time, would I include an article on the team, but I would have gone into detail with the quick selection to get rid of as much green screen as possible. Especially the hair was difficult to do as it kept getting selected. But had I had more time I would have definitely been more precise. 

Overall, I should have related my front cover sub-lines and contents more with more appropriate photos and not just use photos in which I edited out the background. I should have actually used some photos which have a background so I can get photos of the college that I am representing. 

In general, if I had more time I wouldn't have made silly mistakes like forget the price and I would have been able to be more precise. I would have taken a bigger selection of photos to include to get a bigger eye opener to the magazine as overall, I only used two photos.