The document analyzes and critiques the design elements of a school magazine cover and contents page. On the cover, bright colors and text are used to emphasize an excited tone, while images and puns aim to elicit emotion and humor from readers. However, the text is too large and colors too contrasting compared to professional magazines. The contents page justifies text to the bottom and includes large photos, but it could be improved by simplifying the design and focusing on text and image quality. Overall, the analysis identifies amateur aspects that do not meet professional magazine standards.

1. School Magazine Analysis

2. Front Cover
Bright colours and
overpowering text is used
to emphasize the frantic
nature of the magazine
Feature photo, I used an
emotional and
metaphorical image here to
create a sense of emotion
to the reader. The more we
look at the image the more
we feel like we begin to
share this intimate moment
with them. We feel
sympathy as we start to see
the tragedy of the situation
that has happened. This
shows the harsh reality of
society and the dark and
dangerous reality of the
music world.
Elaborate pun from Mr McGowan, creates a sense of humour and
entices the reader to read on,
bright green font is used to stand out and contrast to the pink. I have
used pink and green together because pink and green are
complementary colours with one another and work well together.
This means that the colour “pops out” from the page because the
colours complement each other
Eye-catching Header makes the cover unique
and stand out compared to other magazines.
I used bright colours throughout to emphasize
the excitement that I wanted to present
The Puff featured here saying “free pen” is meant to create some sense of
humour whilst also mimicking the conventional style of over marketing
magazines and kids magazines, where they try to give out free products in an
attempt to entice their target audience. This is a school magazine so is a ‘kids’
magazine in a sense, this “free pen” sub headline would actually be of some
use to pupils and mocks the common day to day experience of loosing and
finding pens throughout school. Each part has been carefully selected to
symbolise everything that is a recognised part of high school life. The bright
and over done text and fonts is a reference to the old days of class
PowerPoint presentations where kids would mindlessly create these hideous
presentations in an attempt to look “COOL” and interesting to they're friends
when really it just looks like an explosion in a play dough factory.
If they could actually see the text that is blended into the dark background it
may be of some use. This too has been done as a reference to amateur
publishing work, where you cant see the text in front of the background
because of the colours being too similar. From looking at professional
magazines you don’t see insignificant text, anywhere!
It must stand out and it must be legible and presentable.
(Otherwise what's the point in having it on there!)
The photo manipulation here is very basic and
the rubbing out of the image is very poorly
done. If you look at professional Photoshop
work you wont see any poorly done images on
any covers. It must be clean, it must be
professional and it must blend in or work
effectively
The word “swag” is repeated throughout the cover of the
magazine and again throughout the rest of the magazine
to act as an identification to the reader. The word swag is
used in connotation to the confused youth of this
generation and implies that this is a magazine designed for
them and all their “swaggy” needs.
Here you may notice
some purpose done
spelling mistakes in
the style of a student.
The language used has
been done for effect
to create an informal
feel to the reader and
causes them to read it
in that way.

3. Contents Page
Here I have justified the text to the
bottom of the page. I have done this as
many magazines follow this idea of
putting all their text to the bottom of the
page and including a large feature photo
above. Although I have done this, from
my experience of looking at professional
magazines I can see my design still
doesn’t include all the specific features
that makes a good contents page. when
compared with more professional
magazines I can see that the text is too
overpowering and far too frantic in
terms of design and choice of colours
and positioning of text.
The photo manipulation here is very
basic and amateur in terms of the
quality of the editing, and the
speckles of unfinished removing.
To improve this I could have spent
more time editing and removing
unnecessary marks on the layers and
making it more clean and consistent
to make it a higher quality image.
Hashtag used here as a reference to social media encouraging
people to use the hashtag on sites like twitter, Instagram and
Facebook to get the magazine trending and create a storm of
social media attention promoting the magazine.
I have included a second image
that has been justified to the
right corner of the page. This is
often done in professional
magazines, but if you look
closely you can see that part of
the image has been rubbed out
to show part of the drum kit .
This could be improved if I
spent more time focusing on
the quality of the editing but
still works effectively.
Puffs and headings
are featured
throughout the
contents page to
create a sense of
excitement to
engage the reader.
The words used are
sharp and exciting
and is purposely
used to give an extra
sense of energy that
people are drawn to.