When desiging my college magazine I wanted to have a clear idea of the design conventions that I would use and the colours, fonts and themes that would run throughout my magazine if it were real. I decided to use a bold masthead that stretched across the entire width of the magazine to create the idea that ‘The Buzz’ is a simple, sophisticated and reader friendly magazine. As this magazine would be used for educational purposes I felt it was important to keep the layout and design as simple and clean as possible; an overcrowded or ‘busy’ cover would not be appropriate for a magzine of this genre. My central image is of a typical Stanmore College student sitting on a wall near the reception building. I chose to use this image because it does not target any specific type of student; she is not situated in a science lab or an art studio – she could be studying anything which suggests that the magazine is suitable for all students as opposed to students studying a particular thing. The colors that I used on the cover are simple navy, white and red. I decided to use these colours as they are quite neutral and ‘education friendly’; I think that using bright neon colours on the cover of this magazine may have caused it to look like it was aimed at a much younger audience and could potentially put college students off picking it up or taking it seriously.
AS Media Studies 