Cover page conventions

One the contents page whoever the cover model is they should be looking directly into the camera. The reason being is because eye contact is important.

When designing a cover you should play around with your ideas, you can exaggerate, however you should remain within your concept and style and you should know what you are going to exaggerate.

On each cover there needs to be one headline that will pop out.  In size, in colour, in attitude.

The cover page should have a focus point. There can be a model in the image it and it can be a headline or a number, although something has to draw the eye.

You should also divide your cover page into three sections. These sections should be the big one with a main cover line, smaller one with few a cover lines and the smallest one just adding more cover lines.

If you are planning to use orange colour for the cover lines you should print them with additional spot colour. The reason for this is because orange never looks nice when printed in traditional CMYK process. It will look a sort of brownish colour.

Green is the colour which is least used on cover pages. However red is the most popular one. No matter which one you pick you need to make sure you have a contrast between colours. It is known to be said that black covers do not sell as well, however they are wrong. They are wrong.

When writing the smaller cover lines rather go with black text or white if the background is dark. Although for the bigger ones use colours.

The masthead should be a bit below with some cover lines above it even if you have never done it. This would help if your magazine is tucked away on the shelves.

 In USA magazines they are racked in a waterfall presentation so that the top third of the magazine is the most visible part and there you will see the biggest cover lines. In Europe they are presented differently. Over here magazines are stacked so that the left third of the magazine is the most visible one. Therefore this is why there are so many magazines in Europe with masthead in top left position.

On the cover page photography looks better and sells more than illustrations on the cover page because it is more eye catching.

Lastly it doesn’t matter if you shoot the cover model in your studio or if you buy stock photo of a model background has to be in a solid colour. 

Contents conventions

Content:

Content must contain usually up to 4 small images. The colours that are used on the contents page are usually the same as the colour scheme on the front cover

The images used should take up to at least 50% of the page. Also these images should usually contain the Page Number and Anchorage Text which is the description, occasionally a Pull Quote.

The structured layout should also include 1-3 columns divided into categories and headings e.g. its main categories – features and regulars

Features in different font/border as its special

The contents items should be Bold/Italic titles in size 12/13pt and the description in size 11/12pt.

At the top of the page there should be the name of the magazine, its issue date and word contents.

The content should also include subscription and contact information, and issue date/ month, any social Media Info, the photographer Credits. However sometimes there maybe a letter from the editor and also an image of the front cover.

Questionnaire

From my questionnaire it has be shown that for question number 1, 15 people said option A, 7 people said option B and 8 people said option C. Question number 2  states that 16 students out of the 30 students would read the magazine and 4 said maybe and 10of them said no. From that result the majority said they would read the school magazine which will help to get it published because people would show an interest Question 3 helped use because 20 people have said that the content is more important and 10 people said the design is important. 7 students said they would want the magazine presented with Red, blue and yellow colours, 14 said green, black and orange because it’s nearly Halloween and 9 said red, white and blue. From the colours Question 5 has shown that they would prefer a Halloween edition because 21 ticked Halloween and 5 said Christmas and 4 said harvest. The 30 students have picked that they would prefer this magazine in the font ‘Arial’ as it is a clear font. All of them circled yes on question 7 because they would want it to contain games. On question 8 the result has shown that students would only want to pay 50p as and the title of the magazine has been chosen to be ‘’Chislehurst News’. 

mode of address

Mode of address can be defined as the ways in which the relations between addresser and addressee are constructed in a text. 

It is how the text speaks to its audience for example how direct or indirect.

A newscaster speaks directly to the camera and therefore it is directly to the audience. Soaps speaks indirectly because we are watching people talking and acting with one another.

There are different types of modes. There is ‘1^st person’ which is used when writing in a diary because you're talking about yourself as in ‘I and Me. Also There is ‘3^rd person’ that is used as a narrative. 

music mag annotation

This annotations was part of  my set bridging unit. I chose the magazine 'We love Pop' and in this picture it presents my annotations. 

Colour wheel

There are three basic categories of the colour theory which are useful. The colour wheel, colour harmony, and the context of how colours are being used.

Colour theories create a consistent structure for colour. For example, if we have an assortment of fruits and vegetables, we can organize them all by colour and place them on a circle which would show the colours in relative to each other.

A colour circle, being based on red, yellow and blue, is traditional in the field of art. Sir Isaac Newton developed the first circular diagram of colours in 1666. Since then, scientists and artists have studied and designed many variations of this idea.

Primary Colours: Red, yellow and blue

In traditional colour theory that are used within paint and pigments, primary colours are the 3 pigment colours that can’t be mixed or formed by any combination of other colours.

Secondary Colours: Green, orange and purple

These are the colours that are formed by mixing the primary colours together.

Tertiary Colours: Yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green & yellow-green.

contents annotation

This is my annotation for a music magazine contents page which was set as part of bridging unit.

School magazine contents page annotation

This is my annotations of a school magazine which was set as part of my bridging unit.

Typography

1. Typography is an art and technique of arranging text to make language easier to read and more appealing when displayed. The arrangement of the text involves selecting typefaces, point size, line length, line-spacing, letter-spacing , and adjusting the space within the letters.

    Type design is a related craft, which is sometimes considered a part of typography. A lot of  typographers don't design typefaces, and some type designers don't consider themselves as being a  typographer. In now days, typography has been put in film, television, and online broadcasts, so it can create emotion to communication.

   
   

   Typography is the work of typesetters, compositors, typographers, graphic designers, art directors, comic book artists, graffiti artists, and also anybody else who arranges graphics for a product. Digitization allowed typography to open up to the new generations of visual designers and lay users.
2. 

what is a school magazine

A school magazine is a magazine which is viewed by the students, teachers and parents. Normally they are aimed at year 7, 8, 9’s. If it's a comprehensive school a lot of the time they ask a certain group of students to help out and design the magazine themselves. However in private schools their school magazines are normally made by a company because the parents have higher expectations as they are paying for their children to have a better education and work hard for their grades.

This is my school magazine annotation which was also apart of my set bridging unit.

School Mag Layout

For my first bridging unit task I was asked to create my layout for a school magazine I'm going to design and make myself.

Below I have presented my school magazine layout.