Evaluation for college front cover.

I started with the idea that I wanted my magazine to be about a secondary school. This was because I wanted it to show how good the school grades where for the previous year to give parents of the year 7 some more encouragement in how their child will do at the school. Therefore my target audience was pupils parents especially the year 7 parents.

My picture I used was of a year 7 pupil which was to give the idea that the year7 have already settled in at secondary school considering they had only been there for a couple of days. The picture shows the pupil with a big smile on her face. The picture shows that the child is bothered about her presentation (what she looks like for school) as her hair is scrapped off face and her uniform is neat and tidy so she looks smart. The pupil in my picture has a piece of paper in her hand which could make the audience think that she is a pupil who has just got her results as that’s what the front of the magazine offers inside and she has also got a big smile on her face which could mean she is happy with her results. I wanted the piece of paper to represent her introducing herself maybe as part of a class task for her first week which could link back to the fact that she has a big smile on her face, the other pupils at the school do not make her feel uncomfortable and she is able to speak in front of them about herself.

I wanted my magazine to be about one certain school therefore I chose my old school, South Hunsley. I used their logo too, I think the logo has quite a bright blue colour to it therefore it stood out quite a bit.

At first the font I used for the masthead was the same as the font for the cover lines which didn’t make it stand out as much because it just looked like an extra cover line, therefore I used the font I have got now because it looks like someone has stamped it onto the page which is very eye catching. It links to what the masthead also says as it is very short and snappy ‘hunsley updates’! I like the red against the blackness of the pupils jumper and the colour also stands out on the white background too however the main cover line is not as noticeable as the cover line, therefore the cover line looks like the main coverline. At first my main cover line and cover line were too long and not snappy enough, the length of them also made the cover lines and the masthead very close together which didn’t look good as everything looked too cramped together. So I changed it to some snappy shorter cover lines.

I used a bar code in my magazine cover which isn’t doesn’t normally occur in college/school magazines as they are normally free of charge however to make my magazine look more important as if there were more important information in it than other magazines I decided to put the bar code on. The date is just under the logo in the top right hand corner which makes it easier to see.

Problems I had with making my magazine cover was deciding what fonts to use and what cover lines to use however creating my mood board help me the decide them issues. I think I have obeyed the conventions of a magazine as much as I can however more cover lines could have been used on the cover to make it slightly more exciting.