Creating a College Magazine, Part One.

My task requires me to create a magazine for my college, I had to begin with ideas for naming and layout. In this blog entry I will discuss my steps for creating the front cover.

The Layout: 

To get the desired layout size I used the program 'Adobe InDesign CS3' on the Apple macs at college. When you open the program it gives you a loose guide for arranging your work. I stuck with this and aligned my images and work within this.

The Name:

When coming up with the name of the magazine I used word play on the name of the college. The college is called 'South Downs' so I reversed it to 'Down South' this then helped me figure out a catchy slogan for the magazine. My slogan was 'What's happening Down South?' this suits the word play of the name and the location of the college.

Photographing:

Using my digital camera I went out around the grounds of the college with a friend and took a series of photographs which I could use within the magazine.

I took suitable photos of an area of the college which echoed the term that the magazine would be released, in this case I picked an Autumnal location to suit. Keeping with the Autumn look I modeled my friend resting on the tree, surrounded by the fallen leaves. My friend Chloe is featured as the model on the cover of my magazine. To show her as a student she is holding her pen and college work book.

The Creation of the Cover

Once I has aligned the photo within the boundaries I had to add the title text, using the fonts I chose when planning the front cover. I wanted it to stand out yet not fall over Chloe's face in the image.The orange bar behind the mast head was a good idea as it helped to draw the audiences attention even more towards the title. I added the main tagline of the magazine just under the mast head. It isn't so big that it distracts the audience from the title but is big enough to be the second focal point of the magazine.

Cover, Masthead and Coverlines

Once finished with the mast head and the tag line I needed several coverlines to advertise the storys within in short sharp phrases. Under those I take all the effects of the font and go into more detail about each of the coverline stories.

As an added extra to help bring the Autumnal theme through is the use of an image made in photoshop with a leaf stencil. I then added these over the bottom half of the magazine front cover. I picked the similar colours to the natural leaves found around this time of year.

Leaf research on google.co.uk

Leaf paintbrush tool on Photoshop

 After I had saved and created the leaves, I layed them over the front cover of the college magazine before adding the 'Autumn Term' edition text. I added this text as it announces the Autumnal release of the college magazine and it explains the colour and themes within the magazine.