Front Covers and Contents Page Research

School Magazine

For our first coursework task, we had to do a school magazine. We were told we had to do a front cover and contents page. In our lesson we did drafts of our front cover and contents page. I decided my target audience was going to be year 7 and 8 girls. I used Photoshop to create my magazine. After I took the images for my magazine, I put them on my computer and edited them in photoshop to make them look more clean-cut and professional. I then used photoshop to add the tag-lines, masthead and plugs. I did the same for the contents page.

The colour scheme I chose was yellow, blue and red because they are bright colours which are eye-catching to the target audience. On my front cover I included plugs and tag-lines to attract the reader and I made sure the masthead was bigger than the rest of the text so that the name of the magazine was clear to the audience and so that it stood out. Also, for the front cover I changed the background colour to blue to make it fit in with my colour scheme.
On the contents masthead, I used the filter effect 'Drop Shadow', to make the masthead more eye-catching and clear to the audience.  On the contents page, I made the page numbers a different shade of blue to make the fonts more interesting and appealing to the audience.
I increased the size of my front cover image to grab the audiences' attention. I also chose to take images of girls because the target audience is girls.
I chose the masthead 'The Haydon Times' because it is quite sophisticated and serious and this appeals to my target audience because girls are more likely to buy a magazine that includes information about their education because they are generally more interested in their education than boys.
I also included lots of exclamation points to appeal to my target audience. These exclamation marks would make the magazine look more exciting and appealing to the reader.
To improve, next time I would add more effects to my tag-lines like drop-shadows and glow effects to make my magazine more interesting. If i had more time, I would also put an image of the Haydon stag on the contents page because this reminds the reader that this is a school magazine. I would also make the background colour of the contents page blue, to make the colour scheme more consistent. I also would make the plugs more interesting by having a different outline colour. Also, I would make the tagline on the contents page 'CHECK OUT YOUR BACK TO SCHOOL EDITION!' more bold and maybe change the font to make it more interesting and appealing.