Preliminary task

 For our preliminary task we had to create a magazine for our college, aimed at students aged 16-19.

For my front cover, I used a picture of myself in front of a blue background, as I wanted a blue color scheme for my magazine. I therefore made my text white and blue so there was a common theme. In my photo, however, my jacket is green, my shirt is grey and my hair is red, which clashes with the colors of the magazine and ruins the effect. In my actual magazine, I would use a color scheme that matched the colors of my model. I would, however, use a better camera, as parts of my photo are slightly pixelated and the lack of quality ruins the effect. The photo also lacks contrast and is a little too dark for the magazine.
I used three main cover lines on my front cover, keeping a common font style (Seravek) and colour throughout these cover lines. I like the font I used as it is clear and easy to read and I would like to use a similar font in my actual magazine. The leading of the line spaces is different however for each cover line, which makes an uneven effect. In my actual magazine, I would try to make sure the distance between each cover line is even, and that the line above does not overlap with the line below, like the bottom of the letter 'P' does in the word tips.

The E text overlaps the P text, which could be avoided by using all capitals for the above text as the letters in capital forms all begin at the same place, so overlap is avoided.

All of these cover lines are right aligned so they're easier to follow, as they are positioned at the right side of the page. By positioning them here, the photo is allowed at the left side of the page, which is the first thing the buyer would see. This means that they are not put off by a lot of writing.
The word "free" is highlighted as being bigger than most of the other text and is placed in a  secondary font style (American Typewriter) so that the reader is drawn to it. This is due to the fact that it is one of the things most likely to draw in an audience, as the typical target audience are more likely to be enticed by something if it is free.
I feel that my barcode is too large, and would like to make it smaller in my real magazine, as I think it draws too much attention from the rest of the magazine. I also think the shadowing below the panoramic image of my college at the bottom of the page is too heavy, and creates a shade of blue too dark to fit with the rest of the magazine.
For my contents page, I added adjustments to photos I'd taken around college (gradient map and levels) to create a blue coloring that made them look better together, and fitted with the color scheme of the magazine as the gradient map tinted the photos to make them blue. I made sure this was subtle, however, and didn't take any of the emphasis away from the more important parts. I divided up this page into smaller sections with blue lines, also, to make the navigation easier, however the lines are all different widths and sizes and although I'd like to use this in my music magazine, I would like to make sure the lines are all evenly sized.
I added lighting effects to my originally plain white background to make a white and grey gradient, as I thought it created more depth than the simple white fill did.

I didn't feel my contents page looked as effective with a white fill for the background as it did with a white/grey gradient as seen in the final design.

Very little on my contents page is evenly organized, and the eight blue boxes on the right hand side aren't equally spaced out which causes the magazine to look unprofessional. On top of this, none of the page numbers are central to the squares and some are different sizes and alignments, which makes the page look messy. In my actual magazine I would ensure that everything was spaced evenly with regards to tracking and leading.

The text underneath the page numbers is badly aligned and holds little fluidity.

The page number on my contents page is extremely large and I would like to make it smaller in my music magazine, and I would also like to include a foreword instead of simply having the features of the magazine. There is no date or issue number included and the original masthead has been changed from how it looked on the front cover (different font, colors etc.) which may throw off readers, so I would make sure to keep these things in mind in my music magazine.