Planning for college magazine

Work in progress (click links to enlarge):

1:

Before I start to create any design, I like to try and start out with a simple template. Using colours that I found were mainly featured on the Wyke website, I created the simple grey background with the purple header and footer. This design is one of the ones that I had been thinking about in the first place but at the moment is just a simple design.
2:

Here I tested around with fonts. Using the Wyke logo font (Soho Pro Heavy) I created a logo design and another line to show what 'W@W' meant. I really like the Wyke font but I'm not going to be sure about the placing of the logo or the font until I have found the picture that I am going to use.

3:

This is the picture that I plan to use on the front cover, I had tried to use this picture on the front cover:
I like this for the cover but it really doesn't fit in with the conventions of a normal magazine. The Wyke College logo is not high enough in the picture and ideally, the model would be on the right of the logo. Also, putting in a magazine title and keeping the Wyke logo would just look too busy and it wouldn't fit with what I designed. I am going to try and use the Wyke college building as part of my contents page later on.

4:

'W@W' is the name of my magazine and I changed the placing of the masthead. I wanted to keep the Oak building sign in the picture and I wanted 'W@W' to be above Oak so you could still seee that it is on Wyke campus.

5:

Something was missing on the masthead. 'W@W' on it's own doesn't seem right. I wanted something that would shout out to the audience. Then I thought about magazine ittles such as 'The Biz' and then I started to think about 'The W@W' which ideally would read 'The Wow!' to the audience. 'The Word @ Wyke' seems like a good name for a magazine.

6:

The next picture was a test of where to put the issue date. I chose to use only the season because a technically a monthly magazine would be too costly to produce especially since it's a free magazine. This way the audience get the magazine according to term. This is the spring term issue. Here I also tried different text border widths but I think I should stay with a quite thin border as I will probably have to make all of my text the same and it shouldn't all have a thick border as it wont look right.

7:

Putting the issue date in the footer didn't really work because I plan to put something else in the footer, I think an article name or the website and phone number. I have changed the placing to above the masthead where I think it fits in well.

Right now I am trying to think how I will place my article titles. I know it will be down the left hand side where the grassy area is but I don't know how to do it so that it will stand out from the grass and the rest of the magazine.

8:

Here I have used some rounded rectangle shapes that I changed the opacity and fill to 56%. This means that you can still see the picture behind them but it is enought to make the text on top of them stand out. I think I am going to make it a house style of my magazine to have all of my texts bordered. They will also all be around the same width border.

9:

Updated magazine with article names. Instead of using white text with a black background, as I did with the issue date, I decided to do it the otrway around. I originally planned to have it the same as the issue as I thought that the white border wouldn't work on a white background but then I realised that the white border would be in 100% opacity while the background was in 56% opacity.

10:

I tried to fill the space above the article titles with something. I chose to use a picture but in my opinion it just doesn't look right. I tried it with and without a border but ultimately I decided that it look better with just the campus in the background.

11:

I was originally thinking thatould have the Wyke website in the footer but then I thought about having article titles in both the header and footer but I didn't want it to be too in your face and to be honest it really didn't look right:

If I made this in to an actual magazine, I would keep the header and footer as a permanent feature even if I didn't put anything in them.

Planning for the Contents Page:

I originally said that I planned to use the Wyke building as my contents page background but this is what came to me when I was making it and it's quite pants:

1:

and

2:

The picture that I took of the Wyke building outside needed tobe editted. The logo didn't even look purple, it looked blue so here is where I started to fill in the blue with the purple. Originally, these were two images which I cut together to make it look like the outside of Wyke. If you look, the logo is lower than usualy and the bottom bit of the picture is too bit for the top bit. It is also really zoomed. To be honest, this is where I started to have a mental block of what I could use for my contents page and this is what I produced. A big pile of rubbish. Also you can see the horribly photoshopped tree. This was after I had tried to think of so many things and I just couldn't be bothered to carry on. I quite liked the idea of having the outside of the college on my contents page but then I couldn't think where I would put the actual contents list.

3:

I started by putting the picture of the model into the header and footer template. It had a grey background underneath the picture layer so when I changed the opacity of thepicture, it gave it a slightly grey tint. I also used same idea that I had for the front cover where I used the rounded rectangles but in a different way. This is where I will put my contents text. I really can't stand it when texts blend in with the background and you can't read it so putting it in the faded box was necessity. I have kept the house style going as on the cover with the bold text with the borders.

4:

The image in the background has a higher contrast and it is slightly brightened. There is a bit of a bright/red tint to the colour making it look quite summery when actually it was a cold, quite dark day.

The contents page here is complete but it didn't look quite right to me. I wanted to keep the top of the box where it was but I wanted the bottom of the box to be much lower so I have adjusted the box to make it longer, made the gaps slightly bigger between the text so that I could add in page numbers and came up with this:

I added an extra page, page numbers and also the Wyke website.

This is my finished piece.