Practice Task-College Magazine 1st Draft

Here is the 1st draft of a college magazine for our practice task. To create this magazine I used InDesign to create the main copy and add the convetions of a magzine. I also used Photoshop for editing my central image, which was required to be a mid-shot of the head and shoulders.

I made sure I added all the conventions needed for a magazine cover plus a few more. Such as a masthead for the target audience to identify the magazine, anchorage to say what is included in the magazine, headline for the main story, kickers and cover lines to help show what else is included in the magazine and a central image to help the magazine apply to the target audeince of students aged 16-19. Other conventions that I used that are still but less important than the others are a selling line, amenu strip, secondary lead, barcode and a logo. All these conventions together help target audiences recognise this as a magazine and need to be included if the magazine is going to appeal to the target audience.

This is only my first draft of the college magazine, although I have included many of the needed conventions it still isn't at the right level to sell as a magazine. By the time it comes to making my final copy I hope to improve the cover by including move conventions i.e. a plug/ear and graphic feature. Also I hope to improve how the main copy looks, try to make it look more professional, I could do this by finding a better use of my colour scheme and maybe even changing the colours of the conventions around i.e. changing the kickers colour to the cover lines colour maybe. Changes do have to be made if it is to live up to the standards of an actual magazine that sells in major retailers, even though its just a practice task and this magazine would be aimed at students made by students, the target audience would still want a magazine that catches their eye.