Planning my College Magazine

When designing my magazine cover I had to do a lot before I started doing the official design. We looked at college magazines around the country aimed at colleges also. We did this for a few reason's some of which were that we could gage what we could do, size of the fonts, boldness of pictures. All of which proved to be very handy, the thing that I benefited most from this was the template design, although I didn't use it on my final design for the cover, it enabled me to have a base then work off it which I believe helped my final design. Doing a questionnaire was a huge help, this meant we could focus on different area's and a thing I was worried about previously was been to vague with what I was trying to put across to the audience, but doing this meant I could identify what I needed to do and properly pin point each section of the magazine whether it be the title, the sell line or the picture placement. On the front I wanted to grab peoples attention with the headings. That was another plus point of the questionnaire we gave people a large choice of options to pick from when it came to content, it was great to have a target and attempt to hit it, which I think i personally did. When I first started playing around with the different tools I didn't have a clear image of what I wanted to show or how I'd show it. I set about contrasting different colours backing a variety of texts so I could eventually come up with something I could be proud of. Without planning my cover from the start with research and sketches then it'd wouldn't even be close to a standard I felt I could get it to in my own expectation.