The modern digital technology will have made it much easier to make a professional looking front cover, as the professional software is much easier to get hold of and more readily available to the general public than the older analogue equipment. To do this project we used technology's such as:
- Digital SLR cameras
- Photoshop
- InDesign
- Internet sites such as Google and wikipedia.
They were useful as they made it possible to do things such as touch up the flaws in the photographs, move the text behind certain areas of the photo, and gather information such as barcodes from the internet.
Blogging helped to keep track of things as it meant I could easily look back and review work I had already done such as the planning, and also the finished product for this evaluation.
Although the technology was useful some aspects of Photoshop such as the "Magnetic lasso" were confusing and frustrating to get used to. All in all though the technology made life a lot easier.
For the front page we used a model, of roughly the age of our target audience, as this would connote some kind of solidarity and encourage college age students that the magazine is specifically made for people of their age. The text we used in the masthead is a combination of a typical American college style text, and a more refined and elegant calligraphy, this connotes both an air of the more sports oriented "jock" style of the american college as well as a more academic and refined artistic approach. This was designed to attract all members of a college based audience. We tried to make the cover stories attractive to people of that age range while at the same time making the main story some what academic to retain the purpose of the magazine.
The reader of our student magazine can be defined by:
- Taking A-levels.
- Age 16-20
- Learning to drive or new driver.
- Looking for a part time job.
- Thinking about career/university.
- Aspirers, radicals and achievers.
- C1/B JICNAR (parents)
- BBC 6 or NME listener
- Plays a musical instrument
- Casual video gamer
- Gets drunk occasionally
Our text uses several features that we discovered in the research phase of our preliminary project. For example we drew influences from "College" magazine when deciding how to present our masthead, and decided to use the name "College Daze" as it made it clear what the magazine was about and at the same time created a mordern fashionable attitude by using the word "Daze" instead of days. We also decided to alternate sides with the stories on the cover as opposed to aligning them specifically to one side or the other. The Magazine for "Beloit" Influenced our decision to use a lot of saturated colours and white, as this connotes sophistication and gives the magazine an upmarket feel to it. However we also decided that it would be a better idea to use mostly sans serif fonts, as this is what most magazines use, and also it creates a less formal and more relaxed atmosphere, that students and young people would prefer.
