Initial Ideas And Thoughts

Within my research I have learned quite a few important things to be fair. Different magazines that have different audiences always have different styles. For me to get college kids to physically pick up my college magazine with an interest then I have to style in a way that appeals to everyone. To do this I have to come up with a layout that has fairly sex-neutral colours which still look vibrant and exciting; with this I simply mean no glossy college magazine dipped in a vibrant, pink paint so it's just for the girls - no, no!

If any college teenagers are going to read a magazine then it can't harp on about exam rules or which new fairy liquid edition the cafeteria is using. The headlines and stories on the cover have to be exciting yet not to revealing so people feel intrigued to pick it up and buy it. To reflect these intriguing stories, I don't need to bland, 1978, black Arial font for starters. This is certainly a big turn off and a lot of other people have used this to emphasise events on their magazines. I want something a little ambitious; sleek and sexy which isn't to overcomplicated that it will make the cover feel to hectic - fancy and light is what I'm looking for.

Taking centre stage, the image on the front of the magazine is vital. It needs to be just right for it to come across as interesting. With a lot of college magazines all I see is an image that has completely nothing to do with the actual college - just pointless really. When it comes to front cover images, I'm looking for something natural and ravishing which can be gently complemented by a masthead and feature-stories.

Although it did state we had to do a mock up of a contents page I have decided to actually complete the contents page like the front cover. There isn't any point of doing half a job and besides, you can't get the full impact of the contents page if you're unable to visually see what it will actually look like. As a small compromise I will create a mock up/draft of the contents page, save this as a jpeg and upload, then do the same for a completed contents page.