I improved my magazine cover my changing colours and fonts. This was because my magazine cover was too simple and dull at first. My masthead was originally white but I felt that this wouldn’t really stand out as much, or express the idea of the “U” appealing to the readers. I then decided to change it to red as this is a bright and eye-catching colour, and the “U” was changed to white which therefore stood out. I then changed the fonts of my kickers to comic sans and Candara because they were at first the same as my masthead. I done this because I had to experiment with a more variety of fonts seeing as magazine covers usually have different fonts to their masthead. In my first magazine cover, most of the cover lines were white so this made it look very simple and not striking at all so I decided to add another colour into it. I have also added a backdrop shadow to the bottom kicker which says “How to revise?..” I done this by duplicating the layer and moving it around. This makes it more clearer and eye-catching. I have also used grid on adobe Photoshop so that my writing can be in line to each other and it made it look more professional. I believe that the feedback given has helped me improve my magazine cover.
I used a masthead and called the cover “sUcces”. I have tried to make this short and simple so that it can attract the readers’ attention. I have also put a strap line underneath saying “From GCSE to college”. This helps the readers’ understand what will be explained in the cover for that month. Secondly, I have used kickers and explanatory text for example writing “have you decided where to continue?” This promotes the features within the magazine. I have followed a standard convention of real media products as I have included kicker lines but I feel that I should’ve added more, as most magazines have about five. I firstly added my own background as bricks but after editing and blurring it, I still felt it looked very fake. I decided to use a background showing the St Marylebone School as I thought this would be appropriate for the school magazine. I used the photo of my model over the initial background and tried to blur the background and contrast my model to make her seem more noticeable. Also, I have used the rule of “third-left” by aligning my cover lines and masthead to the left. I done this because this should cover the readers eye from top to bottom. My magazine cover also represents normal conventions by the fonts. Normally, magazines contain about three different fonts; in my magazine I used Britannic Bold, Candara and comic sans as I sensed these fonts were visually interesting and appealing. I have challenged the forms and conventions of real media was by not including a bar code or price. This was because I didn’t think I needed them knowing it’s a school magazines and that students should not have to purchase it but be given it by hand.
My media product represents mainly students from school. Firstly, because St Marylebone is a girls’ school, I decided to have a model as a female to appeal to the readers. My cover lines appeal greatly to the students in school because I have spoken about revision and results. Also, by using the terms GCSE and College, this appeals to both year 11 students and over.
This magazine would be issued at school whether it’s sixth form or the younger years as it is towards students and their school life. This would be given out for free as there is no price tag. It would be distributed to students whether male or female and probably to year 11 before leaving school to know about the 6th form life. The audience attracted for my magazine would be the students at school. This is clear as I have included all the text about education. This magazine itself is attracted to those moving on from GCSE to 6th form as I have included this under my masthead. My magazine would target 6th formers as you can see the model is wearing her own clothes.My front cover targets young students from St Marylebone in many ways. Firstly, you can see that the background is the St Marylebone School. Secondly, the model I used is young and holding a piece of paper which I tried to represent being results. My masthead is made to be direct to the students as I have written “sUccess” with a capital “U” which is meant to represent the readers. I also made the colour of the “U” white to stand out to the readers. Also, most of my kickers include the word “you” to try and direct the questions straight to the students. I would also address my audience by putting these newsletters in their registers and giving some to year 11s.
I have learnt a variety of techniques whilst making this cover using programmes such as adobe Photoshop and slideshare.net. Using adobe Photoshop has helped me to edit and change my model and background such as using tools like magnetic lasso tool which was very helpful in terms of cropping my model out of the background. The Gaussian blur tool was also helpful because it gave my image more clarity and made her more noticeable. I also found that making new layers was needed so that if you make a mistake, you can easily click on that layer and fix it. I found that using slideshare.net made it much easier to upload documents and power points onto my blog instead of print screening or adding it as an image. It also makes it look more professional.
