Finished Cover and Contents Evaluation

I think overall my college magazine cover and contents page is good because it would appeal to the target audience of East Norfolk Sixth Formers. The name is good because it references the name of the college and also the word “Class” sounds like it’s talking about a class, but the connotation of this is that it creates a classy image for the magazine just in the name itself.

I’m also very fond of the effect used on Photoshop to turn the original photograph into a more poster-esque, artistic looking one. As soon as I tried it on my original cover, I thought how good it looked and decided to replicate it on my final cover. I also think the masthead overall looks good, because it has a style consistent with the cover lines where the semi transparent coloured circles overlap, and I like the way there is a space around “ENSF” so it reveals the background photo (this is more obvious in my original cover. I know there is a proper way to do this without having to flatten the layer, but I couldn’t work out how to do it and it can be temperamental anyway. I like the knife and fork I made using shapes on the main cover line, but I think the drop shadow is too dark and could have been made more transparent to complement the photo better; dark shadows can also look old fashioned in design, especially against white. Overall, I’m pleased with how the cover looks and portrays the style of college magazine I wanted to make a cover and contents page for.

I’m happy with my contents page and was glad I could use the photograph I took for my original cover somewhere. We were asked to copy an existing contents page in a magazine, so I found one and tried to replicate the style as best as I could, although so it looked consistent with the cover I didn’t use fancy fonts where they did. Since we had to copy a professionally designed one, it’s hard to say what I don’t like about it. If there was more room for creativity I’d maybe have put some photos or something in the bottom right space where it’s otherwise blank. But I think it works well how I’ve done it, with few colours which are subtle and don’t lash out at you. Hopefully the content speaks for itself as I think it’s obvious the photo is describing the “Things Every Student Needs” article, because there is a quote supposed to have been taken from it, and it’s listed first on the contents. I like the effect the thick border has as well as the text which goes right up to it, and it seems like a real magazine to me because of the features which could just be changed each issue. The only thing I can think I’d change if pushed would be to add a shadow to the text in the contents column, to help it stand out when looked at from further away, but I don’t think it’s something that needs doing – it detracts from the simplistic style when it is used.

The main skill I have learned here is that when printing you forget you’ve only got so much space to grab the reader’s attention because a cover looks cluttered with loads of text, whereas a contents page needs to sum up what’s where without using up all the space with why you should read it. It was also good to try and replicate a contents page to learn any techniques that could have been used.