Feel Alive magazine contents page

When creating my magazine's contents page I used a previous contents page as a guide.

The larger grey box would be the magazines main image and feature. The text beneathe states that it is going to be showing a party scene appealing for students. The aim of this is to connotate fun and enjoyment, this why I felt a party enviroment would marry well with the general energetic theme of the magazine. The colours I have used on my contents page have been selected from the colours used on the front cover using the 'colour sampler' tool on photoshop. I then made a gradiant background out of the two most dominant vibrant colours used: green and blue. The gradiant allows the two colours to meet and blend wherever you choose.

I think the energy of the page would be affected if these colours were missing as they are very eye catching and loud. This would appeal to my desired audience because only a select group of people in a certain age group, I believe, would be drawn to such clashing colours. This suggests this magazine would be very well suited for young students.

Because I have not included my final images in my content page I cannot analyse in detail the technical code for the pictures used however I can comment on the typography used on my contents page. I chose to copy the main title from the front cover onto the contents page because I wanted the audience to familiarise themselves with what may be the 'face' of the magazine as such. How they may recall the magazine by encoding the particular font and title 'feel alive'.

The text its self contains a very informal language which I used to connect with the audience. By speaking on a similar level as the desired audience, the magazine is more likely to appeal to them. In the text I chose to include techniques such as rhetorical questions, for example 'hungry? got a free period?' in order to converse with the reader. In addition I also used persuasive language techniques such as 'see for your self' in order to intise the audience into reading more and wanting to be apart of it.

I think the overall layout of the contents page is successful because it is attractive and appealing but also includes relevant and too the point information. If I was to improve on anything it may be to add more to the page as it seems slightly plain.

Feel Alive magazine cover

I designed this magazine to appear more suitable for teenagers so my audience was clearly students. To do this I used the results from the questionare to find prefered topics to read about and incorperated them into my front cover design. The objects which are visible in my main image is the scene from the local park which connotated leisure and youth. I used a group of four people to jump off of a verge in the hope of taking a mid air photo. However when looking at the original photo it is clear that it was quite blured and too landscape to be transformed into a portrait image. As a result i cropped out a person on either side and adjusted the contrast of the image. The colours resulted in being very vibrant and energentic which I believe worked well for this cover. In addition the gestures and facial expressions of the people I used in the image are very positive and full of life, which happened to be my aim. Because it is a mid air photo, the body language of the two characters suggests exposure as it is a vunreable image to take however I believe this added to the front cover because it radiates confidence. Because I increased the contrast and as a result the image has become much brighter and vibrant then the original photo, to me, the image connotates summer time. I feel without the court in the background, the photo would be just as successful because the main focus is the two characters jumping off a grass slope.

The photo has been taken at a low angle in a medium close up shot in order to capture the jumping action. The entire image has appeared blurred which I feel stick works successfully because I didn't want the audience to be able to recognise the modals used as their identity isn't important. As long as their expressions and gestures are visible I believe this front cover becomes successful.

The font used for my front cover was aimed to connotate music and CD covers. The smaller fonts or sell lines, appear to look cut out which works well because the aim of this front cover was to attract students and I believe, to do this, the font style shouldn't have been neat and formal but scruffy and cut out to look like the music scene.

Overall I feel the successful aspects of this image are the high contrast shot of two students jumping into the air, enjoying them selves. To me, this creates a connotation of happiness and positivity. However if the image was slightly more in focus it may have been more successful.

By undertaking the preliminary tasks I managed to learn how to include fonts found from the internet onto my front cover, as well as cropping images and adjusting them to suit my cover. I also learnt how to insert a smaller image onto the main one and 'ctrl,alt,T' the image in order to rotate and twist it etc. Also by continously adding more layers while creating my front cover, I found it much easier to edit individual images for example adding a drop shadow.