Preliminary Task

 For my background I opted to go for a page size image of the College, I did this as it is a magazine published about the College so it was appropriate to it plastered on the front. I posititioned the camera in a way so that the sun can be seen shining from the top of the College, this is with the intention of creating a is fresh feel and give the impression that the College is bright and full of life. I have opted to place masthead in the top right hand corner - I deliberatly left a space there when shooting the image so the masthead could reside there. The colour blue used in the Masthead is intended to mirror the Gateshead College colours and as blue has the connotations of a calming nature, it gives a nice feel to the magazine and what will be inside. In my headings I used a black text box, with white writing, the WOB effect was used so it is clearly noticable - I also decided to highlight certain words in red to further highlight them - to catch the readers attention. I included all the neccissary components of a magazing i.e: the barcode, issue number, date and price.
For the contents page I tackled the often seen concept of overcrowed, image engulfed pages by choosing a more simplistic design. I have chosen to have the index of pages on the left hand side of the page (as the reader tends to read from left to right) with an image seperated from the text, residing on the right hand side of the page. Also, a series of advertisements are cemented at the bottom of the page - all in all I feel this layout gives off a clear, fresh and simple feel.

However, I did make the mistake on the contents page by differing too much with the font size that it gave off an uneven - out of proportion feel. A mistake I shall not be repeating when it comes to designing my very own music magazine