Preliminary Task

College magazine

For my preliminary task i needed to go out and do a photoshoot of a student or somebody or something, then create the front cover for a college magazine and a moc up of a contents page.

Here is my front cover for SMC Friendly.

I went out and found some students, then i took them too the chapel because our college is catholic. Although, in the end for my cover i cut out the students leaving the setting out of the cover, but i did cut out the cross from the chapel to display on the front cover.

I believe overall my front cover is quite good, i used friendly neutral colours so the magazine isn't directed at either sex or certain group. Also making it neutral on the cover is both a boy and girl, in a shot from the waist up with the boy smiling giving a friendly happy sense to the college atmosphere.

Plus, at the bottom of the cover i have an 'Also' section, with things included inside which might appeal to the reader to look inside. I tried to give attracting including things like 'win CASH', although i think i should of included the word 'you' involving the reader more, but i still think it works to invite the reader inside because everyone likes to win cash.

However, i don't think i did everything well to make a good front cover for my magazine, firstly i think my photo of the students is too small. Usually for a magazine cover the image would be larger, so my magazine doesn't really follow the normalities of a magazine. And my picture is quite dark, you can't see the students expressions very well and their eyes seem to be dark and shadowed. This seems to ruin the bright friendlyness of the cover and makes the cover look amatuer.

Also i think my cover is quite standard, it isn't that interesting or different its just simple, two people stood there smiling with blank background. It seems rushed and enhancing the point that it looks amatuer.


My Moc up of a contents page

This is my moc up of the contents page for my magazine, it shows pictures which will be featured probably larger inside the magazine and some articles which the reader may find interesting.

I tried to include crosses everywhere i could which i thought worked in favor of my magazine because it is about a catholic college. So i don't think they are too random.

Also, i think my pictures work well and attract the reader to those articles and the articles linked to those pictures are easy to realise because they are linked together by the lines.

However, i think i may have over crowded the page slightly with pictures and if i was going to put the same amount of photos onto an actual contents page i would spread them out more or give them a better layout or just make some smaller to bring attention to the more important articles.

But, i think my main article about the DJ is attractive enough to draw the most attention, it is near the center, it is the largest photo and it looks the most appealing to everyone.

Although, i have put two subheadings 'also:' and 'other contents:' which mean more or less the same thing. In 'also' i have put extra articles, and in 'other contents' i have put the minor minor articles. I think this could work to my advantage but also not, it could be good because it helps the reader categorize all the articles into groups, main articles, other good articles and then minor ones which are just there. However, it could be a bad thing and it could just confuse the reader and look silly because thye mean the same thing, but without them i think the articles on the bottom left part of the page would look random and hard to recognise and relate.