My task was to create both a magazine cover and a contents page for an audience aimed at college or school students. I planned out what images and colour I wanted to use to appeal to college students. To help me do this I asked some of my peers what colours would attract them. I also had to think of the magazine name, the main image and other things that I would use to draw my target audience. The programs I was meant to use were Adobe Photoshop, to edit and improve my primary sourced pictures and Adobe Indesign, to make and design the magazine cover and content but because of slight confusion and teachers not being in I edited and created my magazine in Adobe Photoshop and did not get the chance to use Adobe Indesign.
Before I started planning my magazine I decided I was going to observe the same institutional magazines so I could gather ideas and what was expected from the type of magazine. This helped me decide what colours and type of text I would use to appeal to my target audience. I also looked at youth related websites to see what they are interest in and what sort of thing they would pick up and read about, still considering the fact that it would be a college magazine.
I wanted to make the target audience aged 16-19, both genders. My original plan was to use three colours, colour red for alertness, white to show innocence and purity and purple because it is a neutral colour and would appeal to both genders. I also wanted to get a close up/ middle shot of a girl holding a book and winking to show that it is a youthful, fresh magazine and you can relate to it as a friend. I also wanted to have Simon Cowell (to talk about how he was in school) and Lily Allen (about the environment) on the front page because I thought people may want to hear what they have to say and look up to them. I also wanted to have sub headings for competitions like ‘Win a Blackberry’ and ‘Sign up for school president’ and also awareness about TV Shows.
After getting down to making the magazine, I ended up making different deliberations and decisions. I still decided I wanted to make the ages range from around 16-19 year olds because it is not a big gap in age and I wanted to get feedback from college students. I also wanted it to appeal to both genders. Taking all of that into account I decided the colours I would use in my magazine would be neutral colours, like orange, blue, white and red which would attract both genders. I also decided to call my magazine name ‘SLAMMIN’’ because it sounds more youthful and like the target audience could relate to the magazine like a friend. I wanted to use text that was not too sharp or formal but at the same time eye-catching, so I decided to make it bold and appealing. I thought about other codes and conventions like the price of my magazine. I decided to make my magazine free taking into account that it is a college magazine for students. I also thought about promoting the website which brings two media pieces together. Another thing I thought of was to link colours together and to make some anchorage text stand out, depending on what I thought would bring the target audience in. I also included the date issue which is another important code and convention to a magazine cover. I did not do some of the things I thought of originally because of less time and I had a different view and idea of how I wanted my magazine to view like after I saw other people’s magazines.
I had some trouble cropping some of my images and there were a lot of things that I learnt from in Photoshop as I have never used that program before. I made my images brighter because I wanted the magazine to look angelic, alert and interesting.
I also designed my contents page in Adobe Photoshop and my original plan was to have a lot of colour, pictures and text to bring exaggeration and more of a youthful look. I had a lot of topics I wanted to put on like ‘Get your voice heard’ and ‘Simon Cowell talks about being student president’. When I actually got down to doing it, I had some problems on unlocking and colour as I wasn’t used to the program. So I choice to make it white and grey to bring simplicity, which was interestingly totally opposite to my original idea and make it look sophisticating and cool, rather than loud and exaggerated.
I don’t think I challenged any of the codes and conventions of my magazine, I just done what was expected within a teenager magazine. If I had more time, I would have spent more time with my contents page, adding some colour into it and I would make it more unique and interesting. I would also take more interesting pictures and do more editing around it.
Below are the orginial images I used.
