Tuesday, 31 March 2009

Final design


Draft of college magazine

I decided on trying to make my college magazine not too bold or bright but as simple as possible. To get ideas for my magazine I decided to look at the magazines that I analysed as a started and then develop my ideas from that.

Masthead- My initial idea for my magazine was something to do with moving on from college and then going to University, so I gathered a load of words that related to achieving and moving higher in education: freedom- freedom to choose which path you choose to take part in after college. Accomplish- giving tips and help on how to achieve the best grades. Wyke's the word- How coming to Wyke College can help you get the best student life around, as this is something many students like about college, they like having a social life with other students. I think the name I will go for is Moving Forward, this means that the magazine is for those who are coming up to the end of their college life and are now going to move forward in life, whether it is by taking a gap year, getting a job or going to University

Sub Masthead- Like Love it! magazine, it has a sub masthead above the main masthead, this gives an indication as to what the magazine is about, the many features in or what kind of magazine it is. Ideas that I had for this were ones such as: All there is to know about Wyke- this may not grab the readers attention as they may not know what is in the magazine as it is too vague and does not give details. However, this maybe a good idea as parents of students may want to read about the college. I think I am going to choose Wyke's weekly mag, I am using the word Mag as it is short hand and that is the kind of language that students these days use. The word Weekly is used obviously because the magazine will be weekly, hence the low price I am going to decide on.

Main image focus- I have looked at the front cover that I analysed but decided against the idea to make my image look similar to other images as I think using an image of a student who is sat down and looks like they are concentrating on looking at a book is a good idea because it makes it look like the students at Wyke revise hard to achieve the best results that match their ability, it also will show that students do take college life seriously. I have to use an image that is universal in the sense it is not subject bias because the magazine is a general one where it focuses on many areas, especially University so me using an image that has a picture of a student in a lab coat or wearing sports gear, in my opinion, not realistic. So like I said, the image will be of a student sat reading a book.

Main Headline- As my magazine will be about University, a massive part of applying for University is getting the personal statement correct, so I decided that having my main story about how to write a personal statement would be a good idea to have the main article about how to write a decent one for those who do struggle in getting the context right. Other main stories I had in mind where ones like other University tips as other magazines have a variety, I thought it would be good to have stuck to the same topic.

Misc- To grab readers attention, I decided that at the top of the cover, it would be a good idea to have something that may want students to buy the magazine such as if there was some kind of ‘freebie’ or prizes to be won. At first I thought about putting something along the lines of ‘Free CD for every reader’ But then I thought if this was going to be a realistic magazine, I could not afford to include something like that so I decided on putting something on which may grab attentions of all people, not just music lovers, so I am going to put something like ‘Free discounts for every reader’. This is a better idea because then students who may not like music, may like this better because there would be a range of discounts at various stores available.
I am obviously going put on Wyke’s logo because it is a magazine about Wyke, it would make perfect sense to do such a thing and not put another college’s logo.
The barcode and price will be placed at the bottom, as we would expect to find on any magazine but some magazines do not put their there but I think it would be a good idea to do so.