P5, M4 & D1

This is my front cover for my magazine. I was pleased with the way it turned out as I believe it is to a suitable quality. This is because when I look at my front cover, it reminds of its professional counterparts with its familiar look of a person being the focal point of the cover and said image being surrounded with text. I believe this focal point is a strength of my magazine cover and it is following a very common convention used by every other magazine that I have previously looked at and my competitors. e.g. FourFourTwo, MOTD Magazine. I believe having this familiar look adds to the commercial appeal of the magazine as straight way people can recognise that it is a magazine and what type of magazine it is; this means interest has been sparked.

One thing that I think went well is the way I used the eraser tool to carefully remove the background from my original image of Matthew (the person on the front cover). I utilised the zooming feature appropriately. For example, when using a large eraser for easy parts, I zoomed out so I could see more of the image. Then while I was using a smaller eraser for more detail and harder parts, I zoomed in on the specific place on the image so that I executed it smoothly to give the image a professional look (without large indents or any background left on the image). As this was quite timely, I took it upon myself to regularly save to make sure no progress was lost as it could lead to time being wasted if I did not.

Another strength is how I used the stroke feature on all of my text (except the title) to give it a border. While doing this, I believe I chose a suitable colour and thickness. For the colour I decided on black because it meant that the text would stand out clearly from the background. This was important to ensure as it is vital that the reader can understand what the text reads. If they cannot understand, people may disregard the magazine as they do not know what they’ll be reading about and because they will assume that whoever has created the magazine isn’t professional nor put any effort into what they have made.

Even though I believe my front cover is a success, it is by no means perfect and can be improved. One improvement is to mention the price somewhere that is clear and obvious for the reader to find and see. For example, I could insert a price in the top or bottom right as these are popular positions commonly used by other magazines, most importantly my competitors. I think mentioning the price on my front cover would benefit the magazine greatly as many people may shy away from purchasing the magazine if they do not know the price, this may be because they do not want to risk finding a nasty surprise once they reach checkout. If the price was obvious to the potential buyer it may increase the chance of them purchasing the magazine.

My front cover was not the only piece of my magazine I created, I also produced a double page spread that was to facilitate an A4 image on one side and an article on the other. I believe the A4 image is a strength as it is of a high quality due to the good quality camera on my phone and I used a tripod to make sure the phone was stable while taking the picture. This is because if while taking my picture my hand/phone moved, parts of the picture may appear blurry or I may not have got the shot I wanted. I also think that the image goes well with the article. This is because the image shows a place that would look extremely familiar to anyone who plays or watches the local team. It also shows the location empty, referring to the subject of my article which was to do with people supporting their local team. As the survey results showed that the majority of people do not even know who their team are, I decided to take a picture that shows a deserted field, connoting emptiness and a lack of support or care. Also as the picture is just of a field and not of a stadium or anywhere slightly fancier, it pushes the topic of local football as it is similar to the facilities in which lots of local teams play in.

Another strength of my double page spread is the way I have presented my article. I have done this in columns as this is an extremely common convention in magazines so it was used to make my own magazine look more professional. When I did this, I made sure to keep each column the same distance away from each other and at the same height. This was simply done due to InDesign and the ease in which you can maneuver images and text.

I believe the article itself was also a strength as it was just the right length at around 520 words and it fit the page almost perfectly when at a suitable font size. Statistics were also used to make the article informative. However, I made sure not to make it too formal as this could bore the reader and does not fit in well with my target audience of millennial's. As this audience is a range of young to slightly older, the article had to be easy to read to facilitate the lower reading ages of the younger audience. Microsoft Word informed me that my article could be understood by someone around seven years old, meaning my whole audience could easily read and be engaged by it. After writing my article I had it proof read by a fellow student and a tutor to make sure I did not leave in any mistakes I did not spot.

An improvement I would make to my double page spread is to make the page on the right-hand side more interesting as at the current moment it is quite bland with only the colours black and white being used. In order to take the page that extra mile, I will add colour and spruce up the design of the masthead of the page as its very simple. I may change it to a bold or bright colour, or possible create a design to fill the gaps in which it looks very blank.

After I finished my front cover I saved and exported it as a jpeg file so that I had a version of the front cover that was just an image. I did this with the most final version of the front cover I had created so that I could upload it onto my blog in which I display my work. I did the same with my double spread for the same reasons.

Does my product meet the brief?

I believe my magazine does meet the brief that was set for me as the local football theme covers the topics of community and inclusion. The survey I conducted was filled out by those within the local community, the majority being from my sixth form. The statistics used were therefore an accurate representation of the local area. The subject covered community and inclusion because the article encouraged the reader to go and watch their local team and to be a part of it, with the magazine prioritising local football over the more mainstream professional football news that my competitors would be covering.

In the brief I was asked to create a product. I did so by producing my magazine, I created the front cover and a double page spread which included an article that would cover the main themes of the exhibition. I was also told that all content had to be produced by me so that it was original. I did this by taking my own pictures, creating my own title, and designing my own layout.


What other conventions could I include?
I believe I could use some other conventions to improve my double page spread. One of these is pull quotes. A pull quote is a key piece of information from the article that has been pulled aside from the rest of the article and made bold so that the reader notices it and realises its importance. I could do this with an interesting piece of information or text such as the name dropping of the well known players, this could grab the attention of readers that may possibly just be flicking past the page with no intentions of stopping and reading the article.


I could also use various fonts and colours to make the design of the page slightly more interesting. This does not mean using outlandish colours that may not fit into the aesthetic of the magazine, instead it just means giving the reader something different to look at as viewing the same font and colours all the time could become boring. As colours go, I did not pick the most interesting one, instead I should pick a brighter and bolder colour to grab the attention of the reader.


What file type did I use and why?


To present my product on this blog and when I am distributing it in the future, I exported my files as JPEGs as that means I have a clear image version of my product. A JPEG is a high quality image file type which allows the design of my front cover and double page spread to be shown clearly and to its full potential. This will help me if I distribute my magazine online as JPEGs can be uploaded easily to a website using many pieces of software.


How did I create the product
I used Photoshop to create my magazines front cover. I used its smart and simple layer system to produce it in the layout I wanted. By making my image a layer behind the text, it meant I could cover as much of the page as possible with the image, rather than being worried about covering areas in which text would be more suited. Photoshop also allowed me to erase the background of my picture, leaving just my model. This was a useful feature to use as common magazine convention suggests that the main image on the front cover is usually without a background. This helps the reader to focus solely on the person in the image as they can be a vital selling point for the magazine.


Microsoft Word was helpful when planning and writing my article. During planning, it allowed me to put all my research and sources into one document. This is good when referring to the research you have done within your article as it is all in the same place. It also allowed me to annotate other magazine covers and my own to analyse and evaluate. From the other magazine covers it helped me to pick up codes and conventions that I could use myself and when analysing my own I was able to see what I had done well and possibly what I was missing.


I created my double page spread using Photoshop. This allowed me to create an A3 template and make it horizontal to replicate a double page spread. The image was easily moved and resized in the software and I was able to insert my article with no problems at all.

 Here is evidence showing the effects I used on some of the text on the front cover. These made the text bolder and gave it an outline to make it stand out from the background.

Here and below is evidence of the layers I have incorporated in my front cover and the order in which they are displayed. For example, the text is above the shape it is placed on so that it doesn't get lost behind the shape/image in question.

You can also see that the edited image of Matthew has been used by the preview image on the layers sidebar. The background is gone and only his body remains. The image is placed above the background on the layers list but behind the text. This is so no text is lost behind it.

This is the layer sidebar for my double page spread. As you can see it is quite simple and follows the same trend as the front cover. The text is above the image and background so that it is not lost. You can also see that I have made the change to the colour that I said I needed to make. The green I have switched to is more colourful and has connotations of fields and the outside which relates to the topic of the article.

These two final screenshots show evidence of me using different fonts on the double page spread as I claimed I was going to do. Switching the fonts gives the reader something different to look at and I believe the two fonts I have selected work well with each other to ensure the page looks professional and aesthetically pleasing.