Research and Planning: 3. Preliminary Task Evaluation

My task was to make a cover page and contents page of an educational magazine, including a masthead, medium close up of a student and appropriate text.

I looked at several different types of magazines to decide on the layout and brainstormed on different styles of logos. When I was happy with my logo I drew a rough copy of the cover page on a sheet of paper.

I then moved on to designing the actual page using Adobe Photoshop CS3. First I decided on what background colour to use. I chose a light blue gradient that was slightly darker in the bottom-right corner. I then chose an orange colour for the masthead that would contrast nicely with the background. For the main cover lines I used a pale yellow which would also contrast while not sticking out too much, and a sharp shadow. Sub headings were white. Then I got a picture of the Kinetic Theatre logo and a picture of a Scottish hat from home and applied it to the page. I wanted part of the picture in front of the text and some of it behind it, which wasn’t possible, although I could erase the parts of the hat’s ribbon that overlapped the letters to make it easier to read. In the top right corner I placed the Kinetic Theatre logo along with other small texts each with a different font and colour to add variety. Finally I added a picture of myself taken with a friend’s camera to the background, resizing the image to be a medium close up.

For the contents page I took the two shades of blue from my background for the text on the contents page, using the orange I used for the masthead for the CONTENTS text. I did this to keep the style of the cover page while having the page white, as I think this would look more professional and better suited to a mature audience than a brightly coloured one. Most magazines don’t have pages in full colour like the background of the cover page. I added images from home relating to the content of the articles and spaced the list out irregularly making it seem rebellious and different.

Overall I think that these pages are well-designed. Comparing it with other kinds of newspaper it doesn’t seem as detailed, but at the same time is doesn’t seem cluttered. It is still appealing and eye-catching; although to improve I could have added more images from home.