Front Cover Evaluation

Evaluation

For one of my preliminary tasks I was asked to create a front cover for a magazine for Aquinas College, and in creating this I used as many conventions as I could from my previous research to make it as good as possible.

Before I did anything else I designed and placed the masthead. I went for a typical newspaper name to fit the genre of what my magazine was about; weekly news. I chose the first ‘A’ in Aquinas to be red as in the college’s actual logo this is what it looks like, I then carried on this trend to the word ‘Weekly’ underneath to keep up with the pattern to make it look more professional. I made the masthead the biggest text on the cover as this is the brand and what people will see when they pick up the magazine. The font of the masthead is the main font used throughout the whole of the magazine making it fit in with the house style really well.

Just above the masthead I placed a thin banner to put the issue number and date in, I made it small because these features aren’t really important to the reader, but are vital to a magazine front cover. I also placed a banner at the bottom of the cover; this one is much bolder than the top one. This is because it promotes the magazine which makes readers want to pick it up, and it will make the reader think that this magazine is “the best college magazine going” so more people will want to read it as it’s supposedly the best.

 

Next up is the main cover story. The picture I used was of the person who the story is about, and she is looking directly at the camera which engages with the audience, again making the reader want to read on, she is also smirking like she’s doing something she shouldn’t which links to the main story itself. I filled most of the page with this picture, overlaying everything else over it, this is because it’s the most important story. I used a blank background as I didn’t want anything to distract the reader from the main image, and it to just be her as the story is all about her. In the main story’s headline I wrote it as if it’s actually saying it to the reader, asking for help, again engaging the reader. I broke the house style of the magazine with this headline as it’s blue and white instead of red and white, but this makes it stand out more and also links with the colour of twitter which is blue.

The secondary stories I made much smaller than the main story as they’re not as important and I put them to one side to make it look tidy. There are black borders around each picture to make them easily identifiable, so they don’t merge in with the background. I put the captions under the picture they link with making it easy to read for the reader, and the fonts and colour also fit in with the house style. I made certain words red to draw the reader’s attention to them. I also made the pictures the same size so it looks tidier.

Finally, I put the pug/competition in the bottom left corner of the main image, which is somewhere where people will look but it doesn’t remove the attention from any of the stories. I made the word ’WIN’ stand out more as this will catch reader’s attention.

Overall I am very happy with my front cover; I think it looks like it would as for a proper front cover. Although I would change one thing, and that would be to make the main story headline more eye catching as it seems to blend in with the man image to much.