Preliminary Task

For a preliminary task I had to produce the cover and contents page for a college magazine. Before I did this is I created a flat plan of my proposed cover, to help me decide on colours and layout.

This is the flat plan for my college magazine which I called 'Bede Buzz'. The name of the magazine is featured in the masthead, and is coloured purple to match the college's house style. I have used two different fonts for the masthead to separate the words and make them eye catching. The more formal word, 'Bede', is presented in a formal font as it is the name of the college and should be taken more seriously. However the second part of the masthead, 'Buzz', is presented in a more quirky and fun font, as it is the 'buzz' around college, and what's going on. The main colours that I used were purple and turquoise, which are colours that are used regularly by the college in promotional documents. This keeps the college's advertisements consistent and makes the magazine recognisable as from Bede. I used banners and stars to surround certain headlines and make them stand out from the main image. The headlines were all relevant to the college and the students, including things which they would most like to hear about such as student discounts and places to go in free periods. The main image depicts an AS level student in an outfit to tie in well with the colour scheme and ensure there are no harsh contrasts to make the magazine unappealing to the reader.

After creating my flat plan, I went on to create this cover for my college magazine. I kept it quite similar to my flat plan, using purple and turquoise as my main colours and keeping all of the headlines the same, as well as adding more. I think that this is a successful magazine cover which I am proud of, as I think it meets the brief and is attractive to people my age, which were the main target audience for my magazine. It advertises interesting articles based upon what students might like to read about and is relevant to the college as well.

 

This is the contents page which I also created as part of my preliminary task. I matched a lot of its contents to that of the front cover, such as the colour scheme, the coloured banners used, and the fonts. I also incorporated elements of the masthead into the title at the top of the page, to keep the layout consistent and to determine a house style for the magazine. I feel that there was too much white space on my contents page which I could have filled with images relevant to each feature listed. However I think the contents page is attractive and straight forward and I am happy with its outcome.