The start of my Music Magazine

For the start of my Music Magazine, I've started to brainstorm on idea's for my images, as I really want to think about them so they look like a proper magazine. I initially think I may take a picture of a friend, and try to dress her up as Lady Gaga, as my chosen criteria for my Music Magazine is Chart Music. I want to think thoroughly about the name of my magazine, doing research on the Internet on names and so on.

I've initially started my music magazine with the name "Music Juice", I thought of this, as obviously it's a music magazine (Music), and the Juice resembles general gossip, as in when somebody refers to something as"Juicy gossip".

I have started my magazine with a multicoloured back round, as I believe this is the most eye-catching and appealing cover you can see in the Media today. On researching other magazines, they all have a big image and some sort of colour on the back round, but I wanted mine to be different. If it still looks wrong when I've done more work on it, it can be easily changed.

The front cover is obviously the most important part of the magazine, and so I want to make it look as appealing and intriguing as possible. That means I need to do a lot more work to it, as looking upon it, it doesn't look like a lot of time or effort has gone into it. When looking upon other images, which you will see in my research, the image is always the largest and most important part of the front cover. It's the most appealing thing to the cover in my opinion, so I will take quite a few pictures and see how they fit in.

I also think that I need to research a lot more images, as well as information, as music magazines don't totally contain information on just music, other things are included such as Real life stories, as well as general gossip about celebrities which is within the magazine itself.

Final contents page of my College Magazine

On looking upon more contents pages, mainly on the internet, I found that it was mainly the same font used, which is exactly what I've done. I've changed the colour of my text, and added more, useful information to it.

In my last contents page, I had information like "A map of the Isle of Man College inside" which, honestly wouldn't be needed, there's enough signs around the premises so you wouldn't get lost, so I changed that and added information more relevant to the magazine.

 I've made the charity's information a lot larger, as it would probably be the first thing you see in my contents page, which is to me, the most important. I've changed the page numbers to have a larger range, and i've added more headings like I said I would before.

As my final draft, I've changed my Contents page a lot. I've added a picture, and a lot more brighter writing. Unlike my front cover, my contents page is all in the same font, which is Broadway. I researched a lot of contents pages, and found that many of the best one's looked more professional, and realistic in the same font, so that's why mine's all the same. 

I have also put stars on my Contents page now as well, as I was firstly going to call my magazine, "Student life", but ended up with "The College Star". 

 I've not put lots of writing on my contents page, as I don't personally read the whole contents when reading a magazine myself. I think if I had, had the oppourtunity, I'd have taken more pictures of possibly the campus, and put those on my contents page as well.

 I think as my final contents page, in my opinion, it's vastly improved, and I believe this would look like something you would find in a magazine. My image doesn't stand out like a sore thumb anymore either, as I've put text above the person in the picture's head, which makes it blend in more, along with the other text. I believe my final contents page to be more eye-catching, more relevant and much more like a contents page, rather than text just dotted around the page in a mess. I'm happy that this is my final contents page.

My final front cover of my College magazine

This is my final front cover for my College magazine. I've changed quite a few things about it, while at the same time, keeping some things the same. I've changed the date, as realistically, a weekly magazine wouldn't be read and have as much information in, as a montly issue.

 I've changed my colour scheme quite a lot, as I noticed my last magazine had a lot of pink's and red's which could be more leaned at the female gender more than the male. I also changed the Win an Ipod Nano's layout, as I thought I should take advantage of the person in the picture wearing a dark T-shirt, meaning I can have a lot of bright colours on top. I've got mainly the same fonts for my front cover, as I thought having the only different fonts for contact information, and charities was more noticeable.

I chose to use pink to talk about the charity Breast Cancer, as Breast Cancer awareness is all pink themed, so I thought that was appropriate also.

I have also decided to change the name of my magazine, as I thought from the start it was although original, not very imaginive, and it was lazy of me to just deal with the first thing that came to mind. I thought "The College Star" as a name was good for many reasons. It's slightly associated with the famous newspaper "The Star" and so instantly, you would know by the name, it had something to do with media, even if it was just a College magazine. I also added stars onto my front page, as well as my contents, as they obviously apply to my name. I've made the writing larger as well, as some information was hard to read, and would have been ignored otherwise. I've changed the layout of little things, such as the price, was originally on the left, now it's on the right side. This little tweeking, in my opinion, makes my magazine all the better, and I'm confident it's a good front cover, even though over all it's only a practice.

Research, and more work on my College contents page.

This is the start to my first go at my contents page. I used bold writing to attract people's eye as the reader. I need to possibly add some more writing, some more colours and some more fonts for more effect, I need to put some pictures onto it as well. I might remove the outline on the boxes, and change more things around until I am happy with it.

I think I need to make a lot more changes to this contents page, I took the backround colour off it, as I thought it could make it look better, when actually it didn't.

 On researching other magazine contents pages, I saw they were set out a lot differently than mine. Mine contains a lot of colour, but It doesn't look as if it goes together. The picture looks like it's just been put in the wrong place and the writing seems to be all over the place. I think that when I change this again, I'll have a backround colour, and i'll probably add more text in it. I still believe a lot more work needs to be done.

Even though this still has a lot more work needed on it, I think I have improved a lot since my first draft of my contents page. I have now put an image on it, even if it doesn't look quite right yet, as well as adding more information.

I've put a backround colour onto this, as I thought it made everything piece together more. The information on my contents page, is containing things that are usually found in contents pages of magazines etc, from looking through other contents pages on the internet. I've also done some personal research of magazines, and my contents page doesn't really look like what you would find in a magazine off the shelf.

I've also made my font a little larger, as before it could have been harder to read. I believe having a backround colour on my contents magazine makes the writing easier to see and read also.

My information, although relevant, looks as if it's just thrown onto the page, so I need to change that. I also think more headings, and possibly more images would look great too. I've used a lot of colour in my contents page, as through personal research, contents pages are always bright and eye-catching. I will do some more adjustments to this, and also do something to the picture, as it doesn't look as if it should be there.

My second front cover of my College Magazine.

This is my second try at my College Magazine. I still have the same name, as it may not be the most imaginative name, but it's almost fulfilling the pun "it does what it says on the tin". .

I added a lot more bright colours to this magazine, unlike the other one, so it was more noticable for the reader. I added a lot of things I noticed many magazines included, for example, things to do with charities, I also added things the reader could win, as I saw almost every magazine included things to be won in them.

I still need to change a lot still on this, I should be able to take advantage of the person in the picture wearing a black T-shirt, meaning I can put a lot of bright writing on my front cover. I also need to change some of the grammer, the date, and some of the information included. I've decided to have many fonts on this front cover, as I gathered from research, most magazines have many fonts also.

Research on my College magazine.

To the left is some of my research from google images, for doing both of my College magazines, this helped me get different ideas on fonts, colours and information. I searched for the first image by typing in the Google search engine, magazine covers. In this cover, there is a lot of text, which is possibly an idea for me, there's also a certain colour scheme in this as well, as in black, blue and yellow, which is something else to take into consideration. I like this as a magazine cover, but this wouldn't be how I'd do it myself. In my opinion, I think there's too much text, and the image doesn't look as if it quite fits in.

For my second piece of research for my magazine, I noticed my College Magazine was obviously for College students, as in, fifteen to twenty five year old's, so I thought I would research Teen magazines. I thought this would help me a lot with ideas on my magazines, both my music magazine as well as my College magazine. This as a cover is quite plain if you look into it properly. It has little text, but it's different sizes, which gives the look of there being a lot. There's not much of a colour scheme used on this front cover, there's pinks, blacks, red and white etc. The image on this cover although, looks like it's placed properly, with the text on top of it. This cover is very bright, and seems to be set in a Summer kind of setting, which should be thought about when doing my cover at what time of year I'd like to have it in. These should all be taken into consideration while doing my cover.

This is a screenshot of my research from my power point. I chose a selection of different magazines as the College Magazine was meant to be for both males and females, so I researched for both genders. I did this so I could get an idea on colour schemes I can use that are unisex, and have information in my magazine that would appeal to both genders. The information next to each picture should explain more.

On personal research I also found that just because you have a male on the cover, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a magazine for men. Things that need to be considered while doing my magazine though is colour schemes, as all magazine's seem to have some sort of colour scheme. I also need to think about my grammar, and how my magazine seems to come across, as I wouldn't want my magazine ideal for nine year old little girls, when it's meant for roughly eighteen year old adults. I also need to think how many images I will have on my cover, and whether they fit in or not. I believe the image on the front is the most important, as it almost straight away describes what the magazine entitles.

 

I found this image from the internet, after looking under "Typical College magazines". I thought it was very colourful, and definatley eye-catching. All the writing is different colours, and sizes which I thought was also a good idea. When looking at other contents pages though, they all had the same font, and this is the only image I found that had different fonts on the contents page. It doesn't have a backround colour, but I personally don't think it needs one. This contents page doesn't have an image either, but I don't think it really needs one.

I wouldn't personally have this as my own contents page, but I still think it's a simple, but good idea.

I found this image also on the internet, under the search "Simple College contents pages". I don't think this is a very good magazine, as a personal judgement, as It doesn't look very imaginitive or put together. There is an image on this though, and It looks as if it's just a typical college student. There's a lot of writing that will probably not all be read, but the information is useful though. I don't see this as a very appealing contents page, as It didn't really appeal to me. I just think it's a very basic college cover, but in their defence, College magazines arn't supposed to be exactly professional.