Evaluation Of My College Magazine

In this task we were told we had to make a front cover for a college magazine and a draft for a contents page. I really underestimated this task as it proved to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. For starters getting a photo that would be eye-catching and relevant was very difficult. What to put on the front page for headlines, sub-stories, and general information was hard as well and I put a lot of research into getting the right things to put on the front cover. The contents page did not take as long as I thought it would; this was due to not having to put much on.

The first thing I did for my front cover was take a photograph. I originally took about fifty of around the college and the people in it. I then went back and started narrowing it down to about ten. Out of the ten I decided which one would be best to put on the front cover, this ended up been a photo of the Wilson Building. After putting it onto Microsoft Publisher I started work on the actual front cover. I needed a logo and slogan. I came up with “Wyke Weekly”, “College News” and Wyke News”. Wyke Weekly seemed too cheesy and it didn’t feel right having it on there. College News was too general and I wanted a magazine for this particular college. Wyke News worked well enough. As I sat back and looked at the front cover so far I realised I really didn’t like it. It looked too much like a brochure for advertising the sale of a house, or a leaflet advertising a university, not a magazine for 16-19 yr old students.

I scrapped the whole thing and started fresh. This meant re-taking all of the photo’s which set me back a little bit. I rang my mate and asked if he would be willing to pose for a few photo’s which at first he didn’t like the idea of. After convincing him he said he was with someone else who would be willing to do it as well. So I met up with them and walked around college taking photos with them in it. I went into the rose garden, into all the buildings and even around the building site. This time I came out with about sixty photos and again went through the process of narrowing them down to about ten. The one I found that was the most eye-catching and with the most potential was one of them in front of the main entrance. It was also one of the few where they weren’t blinking, laughing, coughing or sneezing.

I put this on Microsoft Publisher and came up with a new name for it; WykeMagazine. I incorporated this into the photo using the logo on the front of the main entrance. Also on the entrance sign I put the date and price. In the bottom left I put a barcode. I then edited the people in the photo and make them cartoon-like. I added the main headline; Halloween Party At Asylum. This is accompanied with facts about the party making you want to read on. I then took a photo of someone in my class and edited them to look like the devil and put that within the text. This was a task on it’s own as I had a great deal of difficulty getting the photo onto Microsoft Publisher without it having a white background to it. I then put a section in the top-left saying what’s inside. For the contents page I put the heading “What’s Inside…” with a list of contents and a photo.

In conclusion, I found this a fairly hard task and making the mistake of getting the wrong photo’s cost me a lot of time and effort. Overall I enjoyed making this magazine front cover and contents page and think that it has worked out pretty well.