Evaluation - Preliminary Task

Evaluation of Preliminary Magazine

Front Cover of the Magazine.

Contents Page of Magazine

For the Preliminary task we we're given the task of creating a front cover and contents page for a school magazine. To learn more about a school magazine we studied a series of Magazines, almost all of these have been posted on blogger. However, for since this task was to create a school Magazine we had to study the school magazine: Excel. I found that the magazine was fairly basic. Though the Mast head was had a effect on it which meant it stole most of the attention from the other cover lines and images, it was generally very basic and minimalistic. The reason for the very basic layout and little information on the front was probably because of the Magazines target audience, all pupils from the ages of 11-18 wouldn't be interested in the cover, unless of course they were on it. They'd be more interested in the contents of the Magazine. Plus it may be because the school couldn't afford to print lots of different things on the cover because of financial issues.

Taking on this idea of simpleness I believe I could have improved my cover page dramatically if I'd stuck to that. However I felt constricted by the things that the Magazines that we'd studied had on. I felt I had to place a extra cover line on to the cover. 

When I thought of the name I decided to use one of the most positive words that is one of the schools values. This would make the title something they could relate to and under stood. Then I created a fancy effect on it and used a red stroke on the out side of the text. The colours I used on the effect and stroke soon became my house colours; Red, White and Blue.

My font was also fairly simple and easy to understand. This was because my audience wouldn't read a Magazine that they couldn't under stand, plus the simple sans serif text went well with the basic and simple design of the overall cover and contents page. My images were of things that many of the students would be interested in. For example students that love musicals or are in Fame will be interested in the story. This meant that it would attracted more people attention since more people could relate to it if it was the main cover line photograph. 

My contents page was just as simple as the cover, yet it looks unprofessional for some reason. I believe this may be because of the dramatic contrasting house colours I've used. Despite have stuck to the house colours the font of the introduction is too large and looks like the editor couldn't write enough, so next to the already unappealing colours this just adds to the general unprofessional design of it. 

If I'd of had more time, I would have changed my colours to suit better and wrote more in the editors welcome so that it would look more professional. When I do my music Magazine I will learn from my mistakes in this Preliminary task and create a very interesting and almost professional Magazine cover.