Katt's Blog

I went out to get pictures of Jubillee Gardens, so I could experiment with the saturation. This is what I got:

This isn’t bad, but the effect isn’t quite as nice as the first one I took, with the girls in it. That’s still the best picture so far when I used that effect. I will try to get more pictures at lunch, when the lighting will hopefully be better.

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I am now trying cutting down one of the good pictures so it’s in portrait and could be turned into a cover on its own. This is what I’ve come up with:

 The bright colours will make the magazine stand out, and will be more suitable for my younger target audience.

Magazine analysis work that I forgot to publish. Oops

The Michelle Obama Vogue cover is meant to convey sophistication and style, and so she is dressed and posed accordingly, to fit in with Vogue’s typical stylishness that is expected by its readers. Thus, Michelle Obama is protrayed as a style icon, which benefits both her and Vogue magazine.

The Michelle Tratchenburg Fashion cover is meant to make Michelle look as stylish, fashionable and cool as possible. Her clothes and pose fit in with this image, as the denim jacket is more casual and her top and gloves are more contemporary and young-looking than Michelle Obama’s dress.

Looking to my second magazine cover now, I took some photos of my sister and her friends in Jubilee Gardens. I cut them out from one picture to use on the cover, and began experimenting with Saturation, Lightness and Hue on another.

This effecxt looks really cool – I especially like the wall and floor because it looks autumnal while still very bright. I plan to take another picture for the background, use this effect and then insert the cut-out of the girls in the picture.

The colours are very bright, eye-catching and fun. They make the picture interesting, which will appeal to my target audience of students. Plus using Y9s as my models helps show the audience that it’s aimed at them.

I received a comment from Mr Robbins on my blog saying I was “Very detailed and thoughtful on the creative side but you have missed the deadline for a full evaluation of your design. You must catch up.” We were also shown Alice Monaghan’s video questionnaire, which I found interesting.

The comment showed me I needed to start evaluating my cover.

My magazine cover is for a school magazine targetted at parents and other non-students. I used darker colours as opposed to bright colours because the audience would be older, and brighter colours would be better suited for young adults such as students. It also gives a more serious appearance, which is more suitable than a fun, lively approach.

The magazine is aimed at the sterotypical middle-age, middle-class parent. The cover is focussed on the school’s progress and events (the headlines include ‘Ofsted inspection: the results!’) which is what a parent of a child at the school would be interested in. The news included on the cover is relavent to my target audience.

Slight problem- the thumbnail link comes out huge and is quite slow. If you have any suggestions on how to fix it can you comment it? Ta

Apart from that, I’m quite pleased with the final design for the cover. Analysis is on it’s way

{ It’s my birthday today! }

My magazine looks pretty informal, which doesn’t fit my target audience (parents). I’ve tried rearranging the headlines to make it more formal.

This does look more formal, compared to the previous versions where the headlines are at angles and scattered across the cover. This looks more ordered, which seems to suit the target group more.

I tried laying out the headlines differently. I like how they’re more towards the right side, but to be honest there’s not much difference. This version looks a little bit neater.

I’ve now decided to use the ‘colour dodge’ version rather than the ‘burn’ version. It doesn’t take over the cover and keeps the focus on the title and headlines. Plus the black headlines and white title fits in with the ‘colour dodge’, but I don’t know if it would work with the ‘burn’ version.

I have started trying to make my magazine look more like a magazine cover, by adding barcodes, headlines, etc. These are my experiments so far:

The magazine title (Chosen Hill School Magazine) is in white, and the headlines are in black. However the title doesn’t seem to stand out – so I tried putting it in capitals.

I’m not sure if the title in capitals works or not. I tried it with the title as normal, and the headlines in capitals.

I can’t decide if I like this one or not. It does make the magazine title look separate from the headlines, but I’m not sure about the overall look of the cover. I’m going to add a poll, to see what other people think.

This is the final clean-up of Bill and Megan:

I also added the ‘Chosen Hill School’ text – I like the font for this.

I then got the school logo, cut round it and experimented with different ways of putting it in the cover.

-the original logo

the cut out logo-

These are my experiments with the logo:

In this one I used the ‘colour burn’ blending option, and made it partially transparent. This way, the image can still be seen in some detail, but the part of Bill’s head that the logo overlaps is still visible.

On this version I used the ‘colour dodge’ option, and made it partially transparent. Again, this is so that the section that overlaps onto Bill and Megan doesn’t block them out, but the rest of it is still visible.

I like this one because the logo is still visible, but also quite faint, so it doesn’t dominate the cover. Bill and Megan stay the focus of the picture (although the logo does overlap them a little – this isn’t really visible though, so I don’t mind).

On this version I used the ‘colour dodge’ option again, but tried experiementing with the transparency of it.

I don’t like this option very much – the section that overlaps on Bill and Megan is quite clearly visible, and I don’t like it like that.

Overall I like the ‘burn’ version because the logo looks really cool the first ‘colour dodge’ version is also nice, because it’s understated. The second ‘colour dodge’ version isn’t as good as the first, and I won’t use that for my cover.

During my free period I took photos to use on my magazine cover.  During the lesson I chose one and edited them.

The original:

This is Bill and Megan

First of all I roughly cut out Bill and Megan and put them on the same background as my magazine cover so it would match.

Finally, I am neatening the cutting out, and making sure there’s none of the original background left. This is still a work-in-progress, and needs work at home or in study periods.

The area around Bill’s shoulder is where I’ve neatened it up. The rest I will neaten later.

Target Audience: My magazine cover can either be aimed at students or parents. The St Mary’s style cover I did is more suitable for parents, and so I would like to try a student-style magazine cover.

Making my target audience students will affect the cover of the magazine. It will look more like popular magazines like Vogue, Ok!, Hello, etc. It will have brighter colours and will need to be more relavent and eye catching.

I need to look at existing magazine covers that are popular amongst students – e.g. fashion magazines, gossip magazines, music magazines.