College Magazine front cover and contents page evaluation.

1. College Magazine
Evaluation

3. How does your magazine represent particular social
groups?
I chose to represent my social group, students, through the variety of writing, images and
symbols on the front cover and on the contents page. One of the first things you see when
looking at my front cover is the puff in the top left corner which advertises the chance to win
free gig tickets, there is also photos of the venue included on the contents page. This shows
that students are interested in the current music scene and gives the impression that the
students are sociable and enjoy going out and having a good time. The main headline on my
college magazine says “pupil, student, illustrator. CCN student Victoria, grabs illustrating
opportunity” This shows that a student at the college has gotten the chance to become a
professional illustrator. This then implies that the students at the college are very talented
and creative and that they grab any opportunity that they can to achieve their dreams. The
headline also shows that the students work hard to get to where they want to be which is
shown through the “pupil, student, illustrator” part of the headline as it shows the student
has worked her way up to the top. This then gives a positive outlook on all the other
students from the college and that they are all hard workers who take their education very
seriously. The cover line which advertises the magazine’s twitter account shows that the
students can contact the magazine and can have an involvement in what the magazine
prints. This shows that the students care about their college and the other students who
also attend. This promotes a sense of community between the students and that the college
atmosphere is friendly. The photo used on the cover is taken in the college library which is a
place used by all students. Placing the student who has achieved success in a place where
any student can go shows that all students have an equal chance to achieve their goals. I
used both serif and san-serif fonts on my magazine front cover and contents page however, I
used sans-serif more. As the students are all young people, sans-serif associates with them
more as it is seen as a more modern font compared to serif which can be associated with
being and ‘old fashioned’ font. I used a variety of different shades of orange colours on my
magazine and contents page, not only did this follow my autumn coloured theme, but the
orange colour also gives positive connotations of happiness, enthusiasm and motivation
which is used to present the attitudes of the students.

4. What aspects of work are you pleased with and why?
I am very pleased with my finished front cover and contents page as
I think it looks quite professional. I am happy with my magazine
theme and I think it continues well over both the cover and the
contents page. This is as I made sure to use the same font and colour
scheme on both pages. I am happy with my choice to mostly use
sans-serif on my magazine but I also like that I used normal serif on
my puff, this creates a bit of variety in the fonts and helps to makes
my front cover look more interesting and not too repetitive. Another
technique I used to help make my pages more interesting was to
change the colour and outline colour of the fonts. This way I could
continue the same theme over both pages but also not repeat
myself too much. I am happy with my masthead and I think it stands
out clearly on the magazine cover, and that the drop shadow used to
highlight the word ‘college’ really helps this. I think the photo’s I
took for my magazine were successful and look good on my
magazine front cover and contents page. I think on my contents
page, the photos are arranged interestingly and that I have a good
balance between images and text to help the page to not look
boring. I also like how I added the folios on the edge of the photos as
it makes my magazine look professional and easy to see which image
links to what page.

5. What aspects of work could be improved and why?
I think my contents page could be improved as there is quite a lot
of white space which looks quite empty and boring. I would
improve this by maybe experiment with adding more colours to
my theme, this would then help to make the blank, white areas on
my contents page less boring. I would also try and make my
autumn theme more recognisable as other than the autumn
colours, the only themed image I have on my magazine is a leaf. I
think another change I could make, which would improve my
contents page would be to somehow change the font, maybe by
making it larger so that it is easier to read as it is currently quite
difficult to read clearly. Although I am happy with the photo I used
for my front cover, I think it could be improved. This is because the
light reflects off the student’s glasses and makes the area of one of
the eyes unclear and lowers the quality of the photo. To improve I
would make sure to take lots of photos so that I can choose the
best one to use for my magazine and to also make sure that I am
happy with the positioning of the student before I take the photo
so that I could avoid similar mistakes again. The final change I
would make would be to maybe to use a different font for my
masthead instead of using the same for the masthead and text. I
think that this would make the masthead come across more like a
logo and would be more recognisable on the front of a magazine.