Flat Plan Front Cover Rationale

For the flat plan of my front cover I have designed a college magazine named "Back To School". It is aimed at new and current college students aged 16-18 that are interested in what’s available to them when they start the new college term. So, whilst constructing my magazine I had to choose colours that would appeal to both genders of sex. For example, the colour purple conotates royalty, meaning that my magazine thinks of my target audience as being 'royalty' for going to college. Furthermore, I used the colour yellow to conotate them as radiance and vitality for returning to college as well. Hopefully, both of these colours acting together will make them feel appreciated by my magazine. However, the use of the colour black doesn't mean I wish to represent the magazine as dark or evil. I mealy used it to emphasise my titles and sell lines, so that college students would be enticed by the magazine straight away.

The reason I used the layout I did is because it divides my front cover up into sections. For example, the photo of the young teen starting college on the right of the page means he is separated from all the sell lines. This means that he has his own focus point, and my audience can easily associate him with themselves. The medium close up camera shot shows the body language of the student. For instance, this particular stance (one arm up and other by his side) suggests he is comfortable with starting his new college because he is not awkwardly standing with his hands by his side as if he is nervous. What's more this particular camera shot shows his facial expressions aswell. His smile also shows he is happy and relaxed, but more importantly it shows his glasses. I did this because I wanted the glasses to convey signs of sophistication, giving those students with glasses feel more confident by seeing how relaxed this student in the image is. So hopefully by other students seeing this image, they will think that my magazine will make them more like him, happy and relaxed, therefore making my magazine successful in capturing its target audience.

I then put all my sell lines on the other side of the page in big bold writing. This was so they had there own focus point as well. This means within moments my target audience knows what content is inside the magazine, therefore making them feel the need to buy it because it contains information students such as they will need to know. This also means my magazine will have captured its target audience once again.

Finally, I placed my mast head at the top in the biggest font so that it was clear to my audience what the magazine was specifically about straight away. From this title my target audience can associate 'school' with themselves, meaning that they will feel a bilged to buy the magazine and use it to there advantage. The only reason I didn’t make my other fonts quite as big on the sell lines is because I didn’t want them to take emphasis off the title of the magazine. So by doing this, my target audience will see the mast head first, look at the sell lines straight after, and will hopefully be hooked from what the magazine offers.