Finished Products with Evaluation

Here are the finished products. I'm relatively happy with the outcome of them. I like the colour scheme as i don't think there are many newspapers that are predominantly black - neither are there many that are green - most of the ones I looked at stuck to colours like red and blue - so this one would hopefully contrast with them - making it more eye-catching!

In my initial design of the front page there was a lot of open space in the top half, surrounding the "WHAT NEXT?" and the "RESULT!" So I had to fill it up. Then I was hit with a brainwave - to make it look more like the band's onstage by drawing a row of coloured spotlights across the top using Photoshop. Not only did this fill up the page, but it brightened it - it's now a lot more visually interesting and attractive to look at. Unfortunately, the shape at the top was made using a square and a black triangle, meaning I had to change it after the background was in place, so I scrapped that idea and made it a bar across the top. I found the green quite difficult to read, but I solved that problem as well, by adding a shadow to it - this gave it a slight outline, stopping it from merging with any background colours. On review, there are still a few creases that need flattening out, like the white glow behind Alex (the blacked out guitarist) being cut off at the top and the fact he's hovering slightly higher than the others (just look between the 'W' and the 'H') and i'm slightly below (far right, with the bass - between "TO" and "GO"). The final mistake is that I say "note pad" at the top and "Note Book" at the bottom - we wouldn't want the readers thinking they're getting TWO free gifts, would we?!

Okay, first problem fist - I used the same photos with the front page and the contents page. This was to do with the fact that my memory stick broke so I couldn't get more photos from home on to the school Macs and of course, the missing editor. Again, broken memory stick - it's bad enough using the same picture on two different pages, but twice on the same page? That would just look stupid and boring. Not that my solution was much better. However, the odd shapes i've used in the page are eye-catching - the strange box at the top with the word "contents" in and the H-shape with the pictures of the cover story in add an absurdity to the page that I like. It makes the entire page a lot more exciting to look at.  The contrast between light and dark creates a juxtaposition of colours that makes it all easier to read and more tidy-looking. The mix red and the greens is good - as they are directly opposing colours, it makes the numbers stand out against everything else - it draws attention to the stories they're advertising.

However, after making these, I was told that apparently people with reading difficulties or dyslexia find reading green more difficult than any other colour, so in the future I will avoid it.

Contents Designs

Contents pages are all about information and imagery. You want bright pictures that stand out and make people want to see what they're all about. You want brightly coloured headlines that do the same. Yet with this page you also need a good structure to make it easily-readable. I started by designing the structure. I also noticed that the school logo was missing - a key part if this was going to be a school magazine...

The second part was beefing it up. Putting in the logo that was needed, typing up what the articles would be like, a simple image to illustrate what I wanted. I also started to use the colours I wanted. I followed the colour scheme that i'd used for the front page.

Front Page Designs

Okay, here's my rough plan. I thought i'd need an unrectangular shape for the masthead to make it look different to all the others and a grabbing, dramatically shaped ear. The rest of it is pretty basic stuff, like a main headline, with a supporting image, surrounded by smaller headlines.

Then I decided I needed a colour scheme. I liked the contrast that I saw in other designs I looked at, so I decided to have a black background and bright colours in the foreground. For these colours I used some of the colours I found on the school logo (mainly green). I then looked at the other end of the spectrum (red/orange) and used the contrast between that and green to make the ear stand out even more. I also needed to plan the image - he kind of shape i'd need, the way i'd edit it, the size - all that jazz. And which font i'd use. I wanted something easy to read, not boring and official looking (as it IS a school magazine).

Other School Magazine Examples

Okay, so here's the start of the research that's been done towards making my own school magazine front cover. After a brief search on Google images, I managed to find a few school magazine covers - all with their own pros and cons... so I took it upon myself to denotate and connotate a few of them - checking out the mistakes of others so i don't run into them and maybe steal one or two of their better ideas! Here are some of the better ones....

 First things first. The magazine cover to the left here has quite good composition: the writing fits with the shape of the image, not overlapping or obstructing anything important. My only niggle with that is that she's a bit too far down and right. It leaves a lot of unnecessary empty space that needs filling, especially above her head. The font is fun and eye catching, but not particularly easy to read. 

Another problem is the lack of information. Yes, it has some of the contents advertised on the right, it has a masthead and it has a date and issue number, but there's no price, no ear to draw attention.

 'ASHFIELD!' Managed to vanquish that final problem, with the "Free Pencil!!" at the top right hand corner. Although it is there, it's not as eye catching as an ear should be, it should draw in readers with an odd shape, or a bright colour, then draw them in further with the offer it shows. This doesn't do that. It's a plain black font in a GREY CIRCLE. It's not interesting!

But then, the rest of it isn't much better. The most part of the cover is black and white, and the boy in the main article, although not black and white is dimly lit and wearing a grey shirt. It's not nearly bright or vividly coloured to contrast with the background and therefore doesn't stand out.

It could also be improved if they had more detail on the writing on the left...

This one has the structure next to perfect. A brilliant use of normal and bold fonts as well as the beeline at the bottom of the page.


My only nag with this is the use of colour. Although the use of contrasting colours (white and black) does really well to accentuate the font, the colours used are very monotonous. There's no bright colours that are going to stand out if you put this in a newspaper stand (not that a school newspaper would be on a stand?) and make the viewers think "WOW! What is this?"








Fantastic. This has everything. An unorthodox and eye catching layout covered with a mix of coloured geometric shapes, easy to read fonts and an interesting composition. It also has a decent amount of info about the contents.


Back to the colours. It has the fantastically bright red that'll catch your eye as well as the bright blue hoody which contrasts completely with all the shadows - which give the cover article a really moody, mysterious atmosphere, which perhaps represents the tone of the music made by the subject. It also makes you wonder why it's so mysterious and make you want to read it, perhaps? I do. The bad bit about the vast amounts of contrast is that you can barely see the subjects face, meaning if you were a fan of him, you may not recognise him ... and that would be one less magazine sale...


My first thoughts on seeing this was "this looks really professional". It made a great first impression. It has nice, easy to read fonts, a good use of light and dark colours for eye catching contrast (towards the bottom) and a beeline with a special offer, which is always a bonus.


On reviewing, I noticed that the bar code is on the top right hand corner. This is not a good move. 9/10 people in the UK are right handed, meaning if they are flicking through a stack of magazines, the top right corner would naturally be the one they flick and peek at. It's not eye-catching, it's not offering you anything to win or do (unless you have a bar code scanner on you...?) - you wouldn't think twice about chucking it on the "uninteresting" pile. Not helping this is the fact that the rest of that corner is just a plain, empty, grey space.


The beeline also needs a bit of filling up, maybe even by simply spreading out the words a little bit...?


I think I have a few ideas of what to do now :)