College Magazine- final piece

This is the final product of my preliminary task, a college magazine. I changed a few things from my draft but kept the majority of things the same.

In the end I decided to call my magazine Wykeipedia. This is a play on words from the website wikipedia, which is a free encyclopaedia. You can search for anything and it will come up with information about whatever it was you searched for, it gives everything you need to know. I therefore decided to give my magazine the name Wykeipedia. My college magazine is aimed to all students at Wyke, giving them lots of different information about various topics, specifically choices for their future. Hence I gave my magazine the name Wykeipedia, everything the students need to know. The strapline underneath my masthead says “Everything you need to know”. I made sure my masthead was in a large font so that it stood out more than any other text that featured on my front cover. My masthead is done in the colour blue because this is the colour that represents Wyke so I decided to keep this colour theme running throughout my magazine.

My photo is the main feature of my magazine. I took the photo of a young adult so that it represented the students of Wyke college. I took a simple close up shot with a plain background because I knew I was going to Photoshop my picture so therefore the simpler the better. The main theme of the magazine is choices for the future, most students will not know what they want to do and will be "In two minds". I therefore decided to copy my picture and flip it so that the image is doubled. This links in with the idea that students are in two minds about what to do in the future. Also it makes my picture more unusual, therefore making the magazine more appealing. I manipulated my photo in Photoshop and as I had not used the programme before it took me a while to be able to create the look I wanted. However, when I finally sussed it out I was able to create the picture I wanted.

My main headline is the second largest text after the mast head, it had to be fairly large so that it stood out. Underneath my main headline I have a sub heading saying "Don't know what to do with your future? Your questions answered..." This gives readers more of an idea of what is featured in the magazine and what the main article is about. Other headlines featured on the front cover are about winter wonderland and trips away with the college. These will again let the audience know what is featured in the magazine and inform them about social events that are happening. This will appeal to the target audience, as students always like to know about social events. I did all my headlines in white apart from the main headline which I did in blue. I decided to keep the colour theme on my magazine blue and white, also the white headlines stand out more clearly against the dark background.

Other things I decided to put on my magazine cover were a bar code, issue number and date. This makes the magazine more realistic as all magazine feature these things on the front, however I did forget to include a price. I placed these in the bottom left hand corner because it is not essential for these to be seen clearly. In the other bottom corner I put the college logo and slogan, “Wyke College, freedom to achieve”. This will be recognised by the target audience and help make the magazine more personal to the students.

I didn’t include anything else on my front cover as I didn’t want it to look too busy and over crowded. When I did my research on other magazine covers I liked the layout of vogue magazine which was well spread out and not over crowded so this was the look I tried to create on the front cover of my college magazine.