Detailed Research

I started to research into even more  kinds of school magazines with original styles and other purposes to broaden my perspective and see just how other publications come across to an audience, so that I could develop my ideas even further and move closer to actually creating my 'College Life' magazine.

The next step was to plan the physical layout of my cover page. The idea was that although I want it to come across as having a friendly, almost informal feel about it, the last thing I'd want to do is allow the cover to become over crowded with too much information, being almost thrown at you and therefore creating a less classy and professional item.

The title of a magazine is one of the most important elements along with the cover photo because it 'sets the scene' of what kind of magazine it is and as a result it would inform pupils straight away whether they would be interested in picking up the magazine or not. So, the title has to have an effective font and style that fits the brief and suits the target audience.

The colouring of the example was a main feature that I had to consider when preparing to go into the creating stage of the project. I feel like the colours can  largely determine the audience (for example: pink tones would hint towards the feminine aspect and blue would typically represent a more prominently male target audience) For this reason, I want the colours that I do select to be ones that represent a magazine with a unisex theme, so that anyone could feel like they could read it and more importantly be seen reading it. From this I learnt that all these seemingly small factors actually heavily affect who your target audience are and how they respond to your publication. I learnt that the title has to have an effective font as it is viewed as the front of house and creates the first impression for potential buyers. Also that if I want it to appeal to a wide range of audience members then it has to have a consistent unisex colour scheme throughout.