Magazine Deconstruction and Evaluation 2

“Preliminary excercise: using DTP and an image manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some apporprietly laid-out text and a masthead. Additionally candidates must produce a DTP mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of the program.”

I have followed through my colour scheme and pallette to my contents page to keep a constant house style and to be recognised out of its context. In doing this I have chosen particular images that represent the school and feature my three main colours strongly. For example, Tom my background model is wearing the school uniform, which is a blue shirt and black jumper which are two of my main colours.

I have faded out his picture to create a proffessional effect and so the important information can be displayed over the top of his image. In doing this, it also makes the picture at the top left hand corner stand out, which connects to my front cover as it displays “reading buddies” at our school, a particular article featured on the front page.

By using a short introduction at the top of the page, it adds a personal sense and engages the reader to read further. However it is not in a bold font as it is not the most important piece of information on the page. This leads me on to the main contents and features of my magazine. These are displayed in bold down the left hand side of the page; sticking to my colour theme, I have put the numbers in blue to make them appear more striking and easy for the audience to read. The numbers, plus the main information are also written in a bold font, which matches the house style and masthead to keep consistancy throughout but also to appear eye-catching.

I am also very pleased with my contents page, particulaly with the consistancy of my house style throughout the two pages. I think this page flows really well and looks sophisticated for a first attempt at creating a page like this and with using photoshop. If I had more time in creating this piece, I would have added more pictures and may have replaced my introduction with an editor’s note. This would make it more proffessional and more appealing to the reader. However I am overall very pleased with the work I have achieved and hope to continue improving my skills in photoshop and magazine creating.

What would you change if you could do this again and why?

In creating the desirable magazine front cover and contents page I would have preffered more time to work with photoshop, experimenting and learning how to use it to create what I wished. I felt the time that we had to get used to photoshop was limited, so in order to create the piece that we desired, more time was needed. If I got to do the project again I would alter the majority of my front cover. Although i am proud of what I achieved, I felt it was lacking in energy and needed more features to stand out and be appealing to my target audience. Perhaps by using strips and puffs to create more depth to it.