College Magazine Analysis

Rosa Rogerson

What Works?I think that the masthead of my magazine works well as it stands out even though it is plain black, You can easily read it and identify what magazine it is from the detail at the bottom of the letters. I also like the cover photo used, as it is a medium close up and fits the audience of the magazine as they are all young students and this is made clear by the photograph. Another thing that I think works well is the font choice, I have kept to a house style with the fonts using the same one for most of the front cover except the lead line which I used a different font for as I wanted it to stand out as it is the most important part of the front cover, but I chose to use the same font for the cover lines as I think it makes them easier to read and it is easy to identify which magazine it is by looking at the similar fonts.

What Works?Again I like how I have the same fonts as the front cover, it shows that I have kept with the house style, and I have also kept the same colour scheme of pink ,black and blue.I also like size of the page numbers as it is easier to read and catches your attention, and they are all on one side so the lists look organised.I think that the black boxes for the headers (Regulars/Features) looks good as it stands out and fits with the colour scheme and they clearly separate the regulars from the features.

What doesn’t work?One of the things I don’t think fits well is how close the photo is and how many people are in it, if it was further away it may look better as there would be white spaces where I could put cover lines but I have had to put them over the clothes of the models which I think makes the magazine look crowded and cramped.I think I should have also put a banner under the word ‘FUSION’ as it may have made the magazine look more professional but I couldn’t find a colour that worked with the colours on the image and the colour scheme.I don’t think that this magazine looks very professional so I think I should have used boxes with the text in, instead of just words on the background.

What doesn’t work?Because I had quite a large picture, it takes up a lot of the space on the page and that made it hard to fit in all the text I wanted so it looks squashed together and there isn't as much information included as I would have wanted.I also realised that the picture used for the contents page is really similar to the one I used on the front cover as there are only small differences, I don’t think this works as it looks like I have used the same image and haven't been able to take a variety of pictures. Next time I will make the image smaller so I can fit more text in, as the contents needs to have a lot of information in it,

What was difficult?One of the things that I found difficult whilst making this magazine was picking what image to have and where to put it, especially in the contents page as I wanted it to be obvious but I also needed space for the text.Another thing I found difficult was what colours to choose for the colour scheme, I came up with a pink and blue as they match the colours of one of the models outfits but that isn't obvious. I tried to make the ‘f’ in ‘FUISON’ be the identifier and change the colour but it didn’t fit in with the house style and didn’t look suitable for a magazine.

What was easy?One of the easiest things about this magazine was taking the pictures for the front cover as it was a lot of fun and the models in the group photo made it easy to take pictures as they weren't nervous about it.Another easy thing was the research I did to develop my ideas about magazines, I found it interesting to look at different styles of magazines and it really helped me look at the different ways magazines can be made and presented.I also found it easy to decide what articles to have in my college magazine because as I am a student myself I could relate to the sorts of things students may want in a magazine and this made it easier to decide what things would work and what wouldn’t.

What have you learnt?

One of the major things I have learnt from this process is to always research before you start designing, I got a lot of ideas from lots of different magazine styles and this really helped me decide what I wanted my magazine to look like. I have also learnt to take a variety of photos as even if you don’t think they will look good you will have a lot to work with and this makes it easier to choose which one suits your magazines style and genre. I think I will do this next time as I only had a small range of images which were all quite similar and if I had taken lots of different styles of photos then my magazine may be clearer and look more professional.

If you had all the money and time in the world what would you change and why?

I think I would spend more time looking for fonts which would work as a masthead or lead line as my lead line font is quite simple and boring which doesn’t make it attract the reader. I think I would also buy lots of props for my photo shoot as this may make it look more interesting and colourful.I would also spend more time on the contents page, mixing the images around and trying to fit more text in. I could also make a strip line of images to go at the bottom as this way the images are all small but still add colour to the page and I would also be able to fit more information in.

Magazines I can compare to…NME contents page – I tried to make the page

numbers as big as possible so they would stand out and make the writing small so it seems optional to read it.Look – I tried to make my magazine fashion based and Look Magazine is a fashion based magazine, on this cover the cover lines almost take over the lead image which I think has happened to my cover as there is a lot of text and it drags your attention away from the lead image. The masthead for Look is also simple and doesn’t have an identifier, however you can still tell it’s a Look magazine because the masthead is so big and bold that it over powers the other text on the page. This is something I hoped my masthead would do as I want it to be the first thing you look at when you read my magazine.