Front Cover evaluation

All in all i believe that my front cover is designed to a high standard and i have followed the codes and conventions of magazines in general and interperated that into my own views on how the final production should look like. My masthead looks smart and sophisticated in the way i wanted it to. The text is bold and its oozes sophistication due to the font being fancy joined up writing. It stands out to make the whole cover look attractive and appealing. My editing of the Victoria College embelem makes it stand out and has a golden effect. I used the magnetic lassoo tool on Adobe Photoshop to cut out the embelem so it allowed me to use just that specific image. This adds to its effect and makes it stand out more due to it being viewed as one image, with me taking the image at an angle it produces the image at a slant which looks attractive. I also used the magnetic lassoo tool on my cricket image, this also allowed me to use that one specific part of the image i took. I blurred the outside also as i thought it looked attractive and it looked as if it were a moving image and added to the 'action shot' that was already obtained by the image. I placed the image so that it is a medium close up is cut off by the page. As I specifically took the image as a medium close up as was required for this project i wanted it to look as though i took it as a full body image, therefore i used my page boarders to an advantage and placed him at the bottom of the page to cut the batsmen off at his torso. I set a black background as this allowed for the images to be used more effectively and stand out more. It worked well with the white and red used in both of my images. I produced a yellow border to create a sense of sophisitcation and smartness. I produced it in yellow to tie in with the school colours of yellow (the border) and black (the background) to add a sense of house style.


Contents Page Evaluation

With my contents page i wanted it to differ from the original layout of my front cover. I wanted to experiment with the masthead and so i placed it in the left side of the page, reading it downwards. I wanted to keep the school colours visible throughout so i used the font colour as yellow and used a colour gradient tool to place a black background on the side of the left page, fading as it got further along. This made it look effective and attractive, with the contents title standing out as a result. I used a picture i took of me playing snooker in our own common room. I used this to tie in the magazine by using one of my main featues as a 'insight to the sixth form common room'. I used iphoto to edit the image and changed the contrast of the colour and the effect of the colour to an 'antique colour'. This made it stand out and really tied in with the page. I zoomed in on the image using photoshop by 200%. This allowed me to select the part of the image i wanted to use as an overall background to the page. I took the image by using a close up of the snooker balls to be seen and then expanding to a shot of me taking a shot. This looked attractive and proffesional in terms of its layout. I then placed the image as an overall background and used it as the 1st layer in Photoshop, this allowed for it to be viewed over my other layers, for example the text and the colour gradient block. This gave it a proffesional layout and was used to great advantage. The image depicts the fun side of the college which would appeal to both parents and students alike. I used little text on the contents page as the background image was so effective. I placed the text specifically out of the way of any major part of the image. The text was place on the mat of the snooker table and i used the same yellow i used to conduct my 'contents' title. This allowed for authenticity and was used strikingly upon the backround. I used a 'fancy' font which added to the sophistication theme and summed up the college overall, that being smart in both appearence and behavioural terms.