Evaluation of final magazine pages

Most of the evaluation for my magazine is in the blog posts that I have already written.


Cover:

I think the cover of my magazine works because it has the purple colour which everyone associates with Wyke and it is easily recognisable as a Wyke magazine. I chose not to use the Wyke logo superimposed anywhere on my magazine as it looked stupid to just stick the image of the logo somewhere on the page.
I used the text borders in my magazine so that the text would stand out from the images. This idea was originally just for the masthead but when I thought about it, I wanted everything to look the same so, using different colours, I decided to have all of my texts in borders. I chose the image that I did because there is a sense of nature in the image with the bright greens and the tree that the models are standing in front of..
Using the colour connotations that I researched, I knew that all of the colours that I featured in the magazine would be beneficial in making my magazine look nice. For example the green grass on the cover, using photoshop, I enhanced the colour to make it look more vibrant.

Contents:

There is a slightly red/pink tint on the picture behind the contents list because I changed the contrasts, tone and brightness of the image. I didn't adjust much but making the place and the person look brighter would make the college look more inviting and that was the idea around changing the colours of the image. Changing the opacity of the image and then adding a rounded rectangle shape on top also changing the opacity allowed me to create a place to put the contents list where it would look neat and not out of place.
I had a couple of ideas about what I wanted for my designs in the beginning but then when I thought about making them reality, I knew that they would look silly. If you see some of my earlier models, you should see my reasons behind wanting to create some new designs for both of the pages.

Overall:

All of the images that I used in the designs were purposely taken with smiling faces to make the college look like a nice environment to be in and also to show that people in the college are happy to be there. Showing off the modern buildings was also a main focus that I wanted to show as the college looks nice which could also be something that draws attention to the college. Now that I think about it, one of the magazine articles that I used should have been about the new Oak building.

My main target audience is college students (aged 16 - 19) and parents of all of those students. I have expressed my reasons for these targets in the blogs that I have done.

After evaluating other college magazines that I found around the internet, I knew that my magazine needed to stand out by looking good, being up to date and keeping up with a young audience. Students are not going to want to read this magazine if it looks as though it was made in the 70s and it has no great design elements like colour and different fonts. Parents would read this magazine whatever it looked like since they would want to know what was going on in the college regardless of what the magazine looked like so aiming for making the magazine appealing to the younger audience was my main focus.

I think we had sufficient time to complete this project. We had three weeks instead of the initial two which helped a lot. I would have completed the project if we hadn't have had the extra week but I would have found it more difficult to get everything ready for that date. The fact that we had an extra week has allowed me to put more thought and product research into the college magazine world and I think I have created a magazine that follows the traditional conventions of a successful magazine.