My college magazine

The red coloured masthead connotes the juiciness of the magazine. This represents the gossip and fun of the magazine. It also connotes romance representing the relationship gossip. Red is a signifier to stop, and pulls the audience to pay attention.
The cover lines all connote the gossip inside the magazine. As gossip was the favoured topic amongst the target audience. "Katie falls off the wagon" is given a shadow effect to stand out. "Scandal" is a different colour to the rest of its statement. This positions the audience to think that the word is very important. This incises the audience to want to read the magazine to find out more.
Gossip plays a large role in the magazine cover due to this being the most popular topic choice on the questionnaire.

A student is featured in a medium shot on the front cover. The lighting appears to be natural connoting that the college is naturally warm nice place to be. The student is smiling connoting that they enjoy college. The clothes are casual and fashionable connoting that the college is laidback and therefore so is the magazine.
Tiles, benches, grass connote a playground setting representing the fun side of college if sitting and talking. The student’s position is leaning on the label. This connotes that she is taking time to relax at college. The font of "life" connotes elegance and sophistication. The ideology of this being that the college is a nice, sophisticated learning place despite the apparent "scandal" that the students get into in their personal lives. This represents the separation between personal lives and the student’s academic studies. The background shows green grass on a sunny day. This connotes that the college is a positive place to be. The windows connote that the reader will gain an insight into college life. The bright colours featured in the cover lines connote that the magazine is fun and not to serious.

The contents page features red boxes saying “cover story” on the articles that appear on the cover. The red grabs the reader’s attention. This represents that these are the most important stories. The font is rounded connoting that the magazine isn’t too serious and is simpler. The articles are on what is featured on the cover lines. College news such as sport and exams are present along with health advice, Halloween tips, university choices and enrichment details. This connotes that the magazine covers all many more issues in the college than just gossip. A list of best and worst dressed article summary is also present. This links in with the want for gossip by the target audience. The section headers such as “college news” are in bold text. This make them stand out so that the audience can quickly find the section that they want. The light green boxes connote life as green is associated with the environment. This makes reference to the magazines title college life. Page numbers are clearly numbered in red so that the audience can quickly locate which story they want to read without having to spend time looking through each page. This prevents them getting annoyed at the magazine as they may lead busy academic lives. A rhetorical question is used to make the reader think about what has been said and want to find out the answers within the magazine.

I feel that the magazine is successful. The magazine uses the information given in the questionnaire to model the entire layout. The target audience gave the information of what they wanted to be included and the most popular which was gossip gained a large role in the magazine cover as these appeals to the majority of the target audience. The less popular, but still largely requested topics by the target audience are featured in the cover lines. This showing all the topics involved and as they were wanted by the target audience they are likely have their attention drawn to the magazine. I do feel that I could improve the magazine cover by giving a larger role to the academic side of college as the magazine features many topics of personal life instead of more topics of the college.
During the course of this preliminary task I feel that I have learnt many new skills. Firstly I feel that my Photoshop skills have improved. Beginning the project I had very little skills with Photoshop. Replicating a contents page style made sure that I could do all skills that the original designer used. I had to ensure that the page was as similar as possible meaning that I had to learn how to use many tools. Despite using more complicated tools on Photoshop for example the magic wand/quick selection tools to remove the student from the background; I decided that the pictures original background suited the image better as it featured a nice part of the college. All images on the cover are my own. This developed my skills further as all of the magazine had to be created by myself, meaning that I had to plan what medium close-up image I wanted and capture it by photograph.