I was given the task to produce a magazine cover and contents page which was school oriented. I chose to create a trashy school gossip magazine, inspired by the likes of Heat and Closer, however whereas as Heat and Closer feature gossip about the rich and famous I would focus my magazine on gossip about the students of the school. My inspiration for this concept occurred to me when all we talk about in the common room is he said she said, who goes out with who and basically everything that we teenager’s go through everyday. So I then thought wouldn’t I be great if we had something that included all the latest news, gossip and information about everything and everyone around us, so this idea would not only be school oriented but also be perfect for my target audience, the students.
I had a very specific idea on what I wanted on the cover of my magazine. I thought of my magazine’s name at the very beginning of the project as I believe it would help me structure my idea’s and keep everything related. SCHOOL Buzz was inspired by the name of a current blog and TV show within a TV show, reference to the fashion show in Ugly Betty, Fashion Buzz. It detailed everything that was happening in the fashion world and as my magazine is about everything in the school world I thought it would be an appropriate masthead. I wanted to feature a romantic love story, a controversial cover image, including quotes from the article, and facebook, as I myself has had recently got myself into a facebook confrontation which led to pretty much led people talking about it and me and my friends. The romantic love story was inspired by the constant new couples that were always emerging day in and day out at school. The cover image and main article were inspired by Taylor Momsen, who and just been branded as a wild child in a recent magazine article and for dressing inappropriate for her age. So I thought I would combine that with your regular female school student and there was the main selling point for my magazine. As I said earlier my facebook segment of the cover was inspired by my own account of a recent facebook argument.
My Contents page combined all aspects of contents page’s I see in all my favourite magazine’s so it would feature a letter from the editor, images of what would be featured in the magazine, Mast head and contact information.
As soon as this small project was announced during the lesson the cover had already ready taken shape in my mind so I went straight into it as soon as I went home and took several images until I found the one which had the potential to be my cover. These are some of my inspirations behind the look of my magazine cover.
Gossip Girl's stylist's Eric Daman used alot of influence's from Taylor's own style to incorporate into Jenny's, Taylor's character in Gossip Girl, wardrobe which includes her school uniform, examples of her school uniform are shown below. The second one in from the left is the one which inspired me the most, whilst the others really back the whole ‘dressing too inappropriate for her age’ theme but conveying this through her school uniform.
This is the result:
As you can see the model is wearing her school uniform but in a more inappropriate way, which plays up to idea of her dressing too inappropriate for her age and that the magazine is about a wild child, so I made the inappropriate adjustments to the uniform to show this. Also I didn’t want the image to give off the vibe that this girl is a wild child so I chose to go for a more innocent look but it’s not until you read the quotes from the featured article that you understand the look and the personae she is working.
I started my planning process with a series of graphic drawing which detailed the layout of the cover and contents page, showing where the necessary plug’s, text, images and banner’s where going to be. I drew three basic and separate layout designs then I took the best features from all three and created a final layout design for both my cover and contents page.
After I had my final drawn out layout design’s I then preceded to develop them in PagePlus8. I first just duplicated the drawn out design using PagePlus8, the designs are featured below:
Simple Cover
Simple Contents
Then I made two more drafts developing these ideas further and writing in more detail what was going to be featured in my magazine. This included plugs and banners as well as all the given design of the plugs, in particular the plug regarding the romance story, and the quotes form the main article, which I created myself, apart from the last one used in the final cover where I recreated a quote once said by Taylor Momsen. Which helps the theme and keeps the whole main concept focused and on task.
Developed Cover
Developed Contents
Then I reached the final stage in which I started making my final cover and contents page including all text and images. You may also notice some new things that weren’t planned but still made it into the final cover such as an additional quote, featured in the plug about the main article; I also cut the quote from the romance plug as it took up too much space and also it was hard to layout due to the fact that no matter where I place the plug on the image it was hard to see against the main cover image. In the final contents aspects such as the layout, in particular the images that were to be featured were not in one column but instead used around the contents page. Also I cut the plug image, of romance, and replaced it with the quote that was cut form the cover so it allowed the reader to gain some more information on what that was about without giving it all away, and finally the positioning of ‘contents page’, it was originally planned to be on the far left hand side but I thought it would be better suited in the centre.
Final Cover
Final Contents
After the final cover and contents page’s were complete I then annotated them both. The process included highlighting the positive and negative features on the pages. I had to talk about every single aspect used in the pages which included fonts, colours, layout, size, images, positioning and quality.
