I have started to design my final front cover ideas and this is what i have achieved at the moment. I am pleased with the outcome and will move move to start to design other parts. However i may come back to this an improve it if I think necessary. However, I have decided this is my least favourite front cover design out of the three.

This is the final front cover design that incorporates inspiration gathered from other parts of the coursework and the other front cover. I feel this the best design for my magazine and is therefore my favourite design. My reasons for this is the colours used, the black and white blends well with the bizarre and stylish photo. 

This is a similar style to the front cover above. However, for this one I kept a black and white theme. Although I really like this style I feel its too artistic and may alienate some sections of my target audience. If I felt this would was more generic and would attract and appeal more to my target audience i would use this. This is the reason for me choosing the other front cover design. 

Below i have put together some of the shots i have taken to be potentially used in my magazine. Then above shows the photos i liked the most and done photoshop work on. I used many effects and styles to make the photos stand out and be unique. I have chosen the top left photo for my magazine cover because it is the photo i feel shows more charisma and individuality.
The other i photos i will use either in my contents page or my double page spread.

With this photo above i have spent some time changing it and playing with different styles and in the end i cropped it, then made it black and white and then used posterise which has created this image. I'm pleased with this photo because it looks like what i was trying to achieve. Which was a stylish, modern and black and white photo. I will use this photo in my magazine however, not on my front cover.  

This is one of my most adventurous photo ideas. I have taken one other photo i have used before and put in the background a photo of another student, in which i changed the style to threshold and gave her a white outer-glow which does look good but this is more of an experiment than anything. Although it looks strange i will not use this image but i may change it again and once changed i may use it.     

Design ideas

I have taken two photos here to use to experiment with ideas for my magazine and what photoshop styles i could use. For the photo of the guitar neck i rotated it 90 degrees clockwise and then inverted the colour tone to create a bizarre and creative style to the photo. For the second photo i used an effect called posterise and gave it a strange red tint. Both of the photos that i have edited have been done to experiment with styles and ideas.

I have found by doing these photos that i like the ideas however, i don't think they will suit my magazine cover but i may use them in my double page spread. From my other photos i have edited i have come to the conclusion i would like to use a close up black and white photo to use for my magazine cover. I like the idea of using black and white because it makes it different to most magazine and by making it black and white it will strange out from all
the other typical magazines.

MY college magazine work

The proposal

I will be aiming my magazine at future students of South Downs College. These students will be aged 15-19 years of age, year ten and above. My magazine will be about all the many possibilities students will be able to achieve at South Downs College and the future they will be able to embrace. Not only that my magazine will show off the amazing subjects and opportunities the college has to offer.

I have many ideas for my front cover but I really like the idea of using high tech equipment that will appeal to a lot of people because information technology is such a huge and important part of student’s lives, which will make it more likely to sell. I have a few Ideas for my title but at this present moment I would use a title called ‘SDC Optimistic’ because it clearly shows the meaning of the magazine. I will also need a student on my cover showing a positive attitude towards college and I will show this through positive paralinguistic’s in the student.

Fonts are a big part of magazine covers, catching the eye of they audience. I would use the font ‘Bank Gothic’ because it is incredibly clear and stands out. This is important to me because I know that with a very appealing and catchy cover I will have a much better chance of more sales. I will use silver or gray font colour to represent a future focused college and I will not make the font size too big and over powering because that may put the audience off my magazine. There will be a tag line on my cover however I will not make the cover look tacky and messy, its key to keep the cover looking impressive and well formatted. In my tag line I will not give too much away, making the audience want to open it up and read on.

I would publish my magazine at the start of the academic year. This is so that students starting year 10 will get it right at the beginning of the year. By publishing at the start of the year it gets students already thinking about college, about there future. If we are the first college they see a magazine for it will always be the college they think of first. I would change the magazine for seasonal events such as Christmas. By having special editions it shows a very positive and appealing college. No other college will do this, which will make my magazine stand out even more.

Subject choice is the main idea of my magazine so I will use images that fit that style. Although my magazine is subject orientated I would also use positive images of students hanging around college, enjoying life, enjoying education. I will publish my magazine every two months. I would not publish my magazine every month because it’s not a magazine that will have different monthly news. By publishing my magazine every two months it keeps the future students of South Downs College up to date on all up to date events and news.

The dimensions are very important to a magazine because you can be very creative with the sizing of the magazine. I shall be using a traditional sized cover with the dimensions of 8.3” x 11”. I will be making my magazine at this size because I find that small magazines have small text, which doesn’t appeal to my magazine design. Also I would like big images, which stand and are not small and insignificant.

In my contents page I will have an eye-catching title for each section of the magazine and I will use slightly different fonts for each sections, so the font represents the section in the best way. I will only use one colour for the text but I will use an appealing colour for the background of the contents page.