Evaluation for cover page

1. Evaluation of college magazine.
My cover page for my college
magazine uses most if not all of
the codes and conventions of a
real magazine. For example, there
is a Masthead which is larger than
any other text on the page, it has
its own font style and its own
colour. There is also a positioning
statement above the masthead,
issue information, a main cover
line and other cover lines, a main
image, a price, a barcode, a
buzzword (‘FREE’) and a puff to
show a specific piece of
information which will help to sell
the magazine.

2. For my cover page I used Photoshop to produce it,
using tools such as the text tool to add text on to the
page - masthead, cover lines, positioning statement
etc. I used the shape tool to create a circle shape for
the puff and added a block colour into it I also used it
to add rectangles behind the writing brining the
opacity down to blur out the writing in the
background of the main image, I copy and pasted
images onto Photoshop such as the main image and
the barcode – adjusting them to the size I wanted
them to be, for example I shrunk down the barcode
so it was like the size you would normally see it on a
real magazine, and I enlarged the main image and
placed it so that the persons face took up more room
and there was less background shown.

3. The strengths of my magazine cover
• It presents the normal codes and conventions of a normal
magazine
• I followed the brief by using a medium close up of someone
• Its college based as all the cover lines, content and images relate
to college life.
The weaknesses
• I feel that it doesn’t like very realistic
• The image I used has text in the background which makes it hard
to read all the cover lines placed on top which is why I had to use
the shape tool on Photoshop and bring down the opacity of the
rectangle to blur out the background
• The font and colour looks quite childish and therefore wouldn’t
really appeal to the ages that a college magazine should appeal
to.