Photographs

These are two photos that I took for possible magazine covers. I decided to go with the photo on the bottom left as it worked better having only the one person in it. Also when taking the picture I was careful to make sure that there was nothing in the background that could possibly distract from the main focal point of the student. The reason I decided to choose a student for the cover of the magazine was because it was the best cover to appeal to my target audience, students. I decided not to go with the picture of the two students (on the right) as it worked better for the magazine to to have just one student and one focal point for the magazine.
I chose to do my photo as a straight on mid shot so that could capture the student without having to much uneceary detail. It would aslo be eye catching as it is a big photograph on the cover and would capture the attention of students that may be potential buyers of the magazine.

Project brief

For the preliminary task we were asked to create the front cover and contents page for a college magazine. We were able to choose our target audience and what we wanted the magazine to be about, in order to appeal to our chosen target audience. Everything that was displayed on our front cover had to be our own, for example any photographs I used had to be taken by me.
I chose to aim my magazine at college students between the ages of 16 and 18. I did this by picking subjects for the magazine that would appeal to college students no matter what subjects they were taking. So i covered a broad range of topics that would be relevant to college students such as college production and parties etc.

Flatplan

These are my flat plans for my magazine. The page on the far left is the contents page and the page on the opposite is the front cover of my magazine. I chose the title (masthead) Student ID because it seemed relevent to students and would appeal to my target audience of ages ranging from 16-18. All students know and have a student ID card, this meant that the title would directly relate to students. The Front cover isn't cluttered with information as I didn't wish to make it to confusing, but instead I put a few key stories on the cover to lure the students in and get them to read through the magazine. I chose one main image as I felt that this would best appeal to the tartget audience and would ensure that the attention was drawn to the main image and not other unecessary images. I decided to go with sans serif fonts for the front cover and the contents page as I felt it would be more personal to the students and I didn't want it to feel too formal. The language that will be used on my magazine cover will not be overtly formal as I want to appeal to teenagers that are reading the magazine not only to find out about college gossip and news but also students that just want to relax and do some light reading.

I have also added in other details such as the issue number the date and the price. This is because details such as this can hugely alter the overall look of the magazine, for example a christmas issue would be different to a summer issue. I have layed the contents page out in a clear way with headings realting to the different types of articles. The reason i have done this is because i wanted to make it easy for students to find any specific articles they may be looking for. This is because there are times when they may be in a rush to get somewhere and don't want to have to flick through the entire magazine to find the article they were looking for. It also allows people to skip articles that don't interest them and only look at what they want to read resulting in a larger target audience as both male and female readers will be interested.