contents page examples, initial sketch and actual page

This is my contents page.

This is my rough sketch of how I was planning on setting out my contents page. I did this beofre any actual publisher and computor creation of the contents page.

I used these contents pages from three different magazines as examples of how to create one of my own.

final cover

After the comments made by those who took part in the questionnaire and focus group I made some alterations and I felt that i accomodated most of the ideas, this is the result of the changes I made.

examples

Here are some of the magazine covers that I studied after my first three drafts of my front cover, I studied them to help me finalise my front cover and just give me little hints of how I can make it look as realistic as possible and incorporating the ideas for my own layout into it.

third attempt at cover

This is my third attempt at the front cover, I made these alterations after looking at more covers of magazines aimed at the younger generations. After these changes I then collected my questionnaires in and asked students what they thought of what I had done so far at the same time and wrote done notes of their further suggestions. These suggestions included a plainer coloured backing to the sections of written text, possible additions that might be seen on real media texts and a less boxy and easier flowing appearance.

second attempt at cover

this is the attempt of the front cover in which i began to add different features before the results of my questionnaire came back.

Sketch and First Attempt At Cover

This is my sketch of how I thought I might lay out my front cover, I did this before I began any actual work on the creation and production on publisher.

this is my intitial attempt at my school magazine front cover. I used this just to get a basic idea of how i might set out my cover and what design to use.

questionnaire

This is the questionnaire which i sent out to 5 girls and 5 boys from each of the year groups so that i would have a clearer understanding of what they look for in a magazine and what they would like to gain from it.

The majority of the results seemed to conclude that they would like to see big bright photos on the cover and would feel respected as a younger audience if the cover was laid out in a sophisticated manner, even if the innards are not of the most mature works. They thought that a magazine that contained school notices would be useful as many miss the school noticeboard. A unisex colour scheme was also very important to the students as they thought that was more appealing rather than a magazine that would appear to be aimed at a specific gender.

magazine covers comparison

Media Magazine Covers Evaluation
The two magazine covers i am going to be evaluating are ‘In the Night Garden’ and ‘COMPANY’. It is clear from just briefly looking at the front covers that the two magazines are aimed at completely different people in two respects: age and interest.
‘COMPANY’s target audience I believe is primarily women, particularly around the ages of 16-25. I have come to this conclusion because of the use of bold, bright, feminine colouring of the fonts with a mix of both serif and sans-serif to give it a young, trendy and sophisticated edge which would attract their target audience. The use of well known celebrities on the front cover will captivate the audience and try and entice them into purchasing the magazine as the audience may be intrigued about the article concerning the celebrity. By giving snippets of the content of the magazine it lures the audience in because they may feel intrigued to know the rest of that article.
‘In the Night Garden’ attracts a target audience of very young children as it is based on a TV programme for that age group, specifically those at toddler age. The producers and designers attract consumers by using mainly pictures of the characters from the programme to make the children excited and want the magazine. The fact that the magazine also comes with a free toy and stickers entices the parents to buy this magazine for their children because they feel they’re getting a good deal even if the magazine has very little and simple content, because it is advertised with a free gift people are immediately attracted to it.
The institution responsible for producing the ‘In the Night Garden’ magazine is the BBC. We can tell this as on the front cover there is both the BBC logo and the logo for the company within the BBC known as CBEEBIES. However with the ‘COMPANY’ magazine it was not as obvious as to which institution was responsible for it as it gives no indication on the front cover so I had to research it on the internet and the institution that I found was called hearst digital.

2 magazine covers

This piece of work was used to help us understand the different features and techniques used in magazine design. In doing this I will have a better idea as how to create on of my own for my media portfolio.