When researching other magazine front covers, there were many elements of design that I wanted to incorporate into the making of the cover, and many that i did not. I was firm in my decision that there were to be no bleeds of captions and images on the cover, to ensure that the layout was crisp and clean. I wanted to use only sans serif font on my cover, in order for it to appeal to the right audience rated on the Jicnars Scale. I aimed to use coloured font, and did so, but instead of using black and yellow- which I had initially planned to used, I used block white with blue- only on the letter 'E' to highlight Education, which is the main intended genre of the magazine. As planned, I cropped the images to appropriate sizes, using only 2, and ensuring there was no overlapping onto either the next caption or image. Despite aiming to use complete Bold font on my cover, I decided that using Bold on the masthead and regular on the captions would emphasise the masthead, which was another one of my aims for the magazine. I kept bright colours to a strict minimum, as despite initially wishing to use these- I found that they looked tacky and cheap, thus inspiring me to use more plain, but bold colours. Red, blue and white are the only font colours visible on the page, as I decided to ensure that the colours matched those in the main feature image. No images were lay at an angle, as this would disrupt the clean layout I had envisaged during the research stage of the project. The cover's layout was the original type that I had desired, however the colour scheme was the only change I made from the original plan.
My final magazine cover design. Displaying colour scheme.Who would be the audience for your media product?
Demographically, the intended audience of the magazine would be individuals rated C1-A on the Jicnars Scale. I felt that this more intelligent target audience would appreciate the more up-market design and layout of the cover, and the content it were to contain; thus being educational matters. Psychographically, the audience that would be most suitable for the magazine would be Aspirers, Carers, and Post-Materialists, as they display intelligence, and a thirst for learning more...which ties in with the educational content of the magazine. It would most definitely not be appropriate for children, pre-teens, and teens, due to the college-based content which would not apply to them as they do not attend college, or have children who do. Adults, and individuals over the age of 16 would benefit from the magazine.
'vibe' magazine...the layout of my magazine was inspired by this. How did you attract/address your audience?
Once I had acknowledged who my target audience was, I was able to choose what elements of my magazine would be appreciated most by them. I felt that using coloured font connoted fun, and was more appropriate for a younger audience. The size of the masthead was clearly visible, and would have been appropriate for all audiences. The layout is clearly presented without use of bleeds of images or captions which made the cover more formal looking, which would appeal more to my target audience; college students and their parents. The audience targeted would undoubtedly appreciate the magazine cover as it is purely informative. I believed that using fillers would be beneficial- but the content of them must be relevant to education and other aspects of student life. For example, 'New lunch menu...mmm'. It is not education-related, but it is an element of college life. Using the font colours blue and white connotes strength, a lack of complexity, easy-reading and unbiased to gender. The magazine is not aimed at a single gender, and therefore, the chosen colours cannot be depicted as gender-biased. Highlighting the letter 'E' in the title emphasised the importance of education. It connotes that the magazine is to include educational-related information. The name of the magazine does not denote the content of the magazine. It does however, highlight the idea of fun, as I felt that giving an education-related title would be tedious, and that my target audience would not appreciate it when they walk into a store and browse magazines, for example. The medium sized image of a Blackberry Smartphone relates to other aspects of college life, apart from education. This small, yet powerful image catches the eye of the target audience, raising interest. It is powerful because Blackberry's are one of the top-rated mobiles currently selling, and very popular among teens.
The main feature image on the cover is the most important pawn used to attract my target audience, as it is of a student. The student is dressed in the latest fashion, modelling the 'geek-chic' style, which is very popular and current. He is holding a text-book, which denotes education and learning. These two elements were cleverly ensembled to create this attractive image, as mixing both fun/college life with education is more likely to attract my audience than education alone. Also, using a male could possibly attract females to be attracted to the cover, but this is a generalisation, and the image was not intended for this purpose. I used only 3 colours on the cover for font, as I felt that too many colours would make it look overcrowded, and would fail to attract the audience in mind; thus being male/female students, parents, and all rated between C1- A on the Jicnars Scale. I also only aimed for Aspirers, Carers and Post-Materialists, as I feel this educational magazine would only be beneficial to those of medium-high intelligence, and obviously, parents.
I wanted to ensure that my magazine fits somewhere in between the two above, as it is neither for purely-intellectuals, or under-achievers. Overall, I feel that the colours, images and layout of my magazine connoted fun and education, and denoted intellectual-matters, despite the irrelevance of the masthead. I believe that it fit the criteria I decided to put to my magazine during the research and planning stage of the task, as I kept to my plan and ensured that I had ruled out any unwanted layout techniques. Using a barcode and a price made my magazine cover look more formal and upmarket, and undoubtedly, more realistic. Important headings were put in bold format, highlighting the heading and caption below, and the minimality of the images creates a sense of simplicity, which was intended. The font size is appropriate as it is plainly visible, and the sells were relevant to the content, and using sans serif font attracted people on the lower end of my intended Jicnars Scale audience, as it gives a more informal, easy to read look.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Using the latest technology has extremely benefited my final product- the cover. The camera used for the imagery was of the highest-quality, providing clear, fine-quality images which we could later tweak on the program Photoshop. Photoshop allowed me to crop and perfect images that I was to use on both the cover, and contents page. Without this program, the imagery would be of low quality and this would damage the appearance of the cover. The masthead was also created on Photoshop, and providing that I could not alter the title in the way that it has been done on Photoshop, using Microsoft Word; it has come in very useful. Photoshop was hard for me to grasp at first, but with some time I was able to navigate it easily, and become comfortable with the program, enabling me to make my final product of the finest quality. It looks more professional, and benefits the layout of both the contents page and cover of the magazine. Before the digital age, I believe that making a product of this difficulty would be unrealistic without such programs like InDesign and Photoshop, and that the final products were likely to be of poor quality, and the process of actually making them would have been highly time consuming.
The internet was also a vital tool, as we were able to copy and paste images from search engines such as Google, in order to make my contents page more visually attractive. Without using the programs and SLR camera listed above, I doubt the quality of my cover and contents page would be of a good standard. I am very pleased with the outcome of both my contents page and front cover, which I worked on with my class partner, and believe that without using any one of the tools and programs listed above, the final products would not look realistic or appeal to my targeted audience.
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