Magazine contents page research

I really feel that this contents page has inspired me to look at different styles and not just the typical page that is packed full of information. I think that this contents page gives you a very professional feel and I am definitely going to consider this in my page. One of the things that I really find interesting about this page is the way they have laid out the word 'Contents', this is because it is quite an unusual way to have it, as most magazines would just have it in a straight boring line. Although I really like the idea of their page, as it is striking and not just the usual, I feel that it doesn't have nearly enough information to tell you in short words what is on the rest of the pages, so it is hard for you to just get a idea of what is in the magazine. I think that the image for my contents page should be obviously music related and not just a picture of a person who is pretending to be a famous singer or music player. I do feel that they could have used a little bit more colour depending on what the front cover was like, but maybe some eye-catching red or yellow to just make sure you've grabbed the reader's attention.

Third piece of research on music magazine front covers

Second piece of research on music magazine front covers

First piece of research on music maagazine front covers..

My School Magazine Evaluation

Improved/Final Magazine Front Cover.

Above is our final magazine, we have improved it by adding and changing a few things:
- We made the 'Misbourne Mag' a lot bigger to make it stand out more.
- Added four subheadings dotted over the main picture showing you what is inside the magazine; canteen lunch planner, map of the Misbourne and meeting the head teacher.
- We got rid of the yellow price sticker as it didn't fit and changed it for a smarter looking price sign at the bottom of the page.

Feedback transcript from our first final magazine copy.

I asked one of my Media teachers, Miss Kalyan, to record her feedback onto my phone so I could then take her improvements and change it for the better. I couldn't find a way of uploading the audio file onto the blog so there is a written transcript below.

"Okay I think it suits the formality of the magazine, good use of colours that reflect the school colours. What I would say is that there needs to be more sub-headings about what is going on in school. I think the 'Misbourne Mag' needs to be a little bit bigger. You could maybe have some lines separating the three images at the top, really to emphasis that those are different photographs. You have a good range of different shots.. so you have a long shot, a close up and another long shot. Your puff doesn't really fit in with the colours, and maybe think about moving it over a bit or put it somewhere else, not sure. But I think the title does definitely needs to be bigger".

We will take all of this into consideration and produce another copy of our magazine with all the improvements added to it.

First copy of my groups school magazine.

Here's our first attempt of our own 'Misbourne Mag'. In the end we decided to go for Plan 1 as it had a better look to it and made the images and writing sit better... not all in a funny layout. There are a few things that I dislike on this front cover and some things that I think are successful:

Unsuccessful..
- Too few sub-heading and quotes.
- Dislike how the price is shown on it but unsure of how to change.
- In the middle is is rather plain.

Successful..
- The easy layout.
- Eye-catching and colourful.
- Professional looking.

Plan 2

This is our second plan. It uses the same blue and red colours and the same number of pictures but the layout is a tad more unusual. This could make it more interesting or go completely the other way. At the moment I am feeling that I prefer the first plan. Although it is more typical, it seems a nicer style for a school magazine that's aimed at younger students.

Plan 1

After looking at all the images we have and the research of magazines, we created our first plan of how we think the magazine should be laid out. This plan is a very good layout for our magazine because it has a lot of spaces for pictures and bold writing which is good because we want younger school children to become interested in it. We chose the blue and red colour scheme because of the colours of our school and the red gives a good red border for the pictures, separating them from the information at the bottom making it easy to read.

Pictures to create our magazine...

These are all the different images that we have taken in order to create our school magazine's front cover...

Our Magazine Video...

This is the video that we made which really helped us to decide what we need on our own school magazine's front cover...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O__SwwIuf0&list=HL1359669567&feature=mh_lolz

Video set-up

This is a picture of our video set-up which shows how we have decided to use a black backdrop to make the video look more professional.

The next post will be of the video that we made where we will be looking at 4 different types of magazines and what looks good on a front cover.