Target audience research

Evaluation Of My School Magazine Front Cover

In my evaluation I will be talking about the successes and further improvements on my school magazine cover which I will link to my peer assessment. I will also discuss the improvements I made to my front cover and why it is that they are so important.

Firstly, my school magazine cover relates to my chosen skeleton diagram as I decided to stick to the template I had created. This, for me, was easier because it allowed me to begin my front cover with a basic design showing what I needed to go where. For example, I knew that I wanted my main image to be slightly off-centre and that I wanted some anchorage text over-lapping a secondary image, so I placed boxes in the places I wanted them so it was easier for me to work out how much space I had. Continuing to talk about space, I ensured my front cover wasn’t too crowded, so I overlapped text and put my cover lines at an angle. This also implies to the reader that I want my main image to be the main focus of my magazine. 

Another success I found was that important information stood out, such as a “PLUS! FREE GUIDE FOR NEW STUDENTS”, I wanted this to be one of the first things the reader would see, therefore I used a puff to display this. The puff is bright red, highlighting its importance. I also used the school logo; I believe this to be important because if the magazine was issued locally, then more people would recognise the logo and would be interested in looking at the magazine. 

In my peer assessment, I got the feedback that there was a clear house-style to my magazine and by using the colour red, this was made very obvious to the reader. They said they believed it to be very eye-catching and bold. I chose to have the masthead and cover lines in capital letters because I believe it makes the information supplied on the front cover seem much more important. 

Finally, I think my images are framed well and they have remained a good quality. This is important because it makes my front cover look much clearer and it shows my photography skills. The main image also implies to the reader that the students at this school enjoy themselves and are working in a relaxed environment, I believe this is good because it sets a good tone to my magazine.  

Even though my final magazine front cover has turned out to be successful, I did need to make a few changes to it to ensure I could achieve the highest standard front cover as I could. After my peer assessment, I realised I need to make my cover lines and secondary images stand out more on the background as they seemed to get washed away into the black and white image behind it. Therefore I decided to use the same shade of red I had used as my house-style throughout the rest of the front cover to use as a border to make sure they would be eye-catching to the reader. Below I have taken a screenshot of my front cover before and after I made some changes due to the comments made in my peer assessment.

Here, you can clearly see the difference between the use of the red border. It makes the cover lines look much more eye-catching. However now I have done this, it makes my masthead look less prominent; therefore I would need to experiment the different ways I could make my masthead stand out.