Front Cover, Contents Page and DPS

I had a lesson today, so I have been working on all the elements of my magazine.

Front Cover

I took some advice for my front cover and made changes according to it.

The main problem that I was told that I had with my front cover was that I hadn't paid attention to the sizes of the fonts. On real magazines, the main coverline is the biggest coverline (which is what I had before) but other coverlines change in size depending on the 'importance' of certain words. Therefore, I made the less 'important' words in the minor coverlines smaller. For example:

• The Olympic Effect
• Your guide to Big Church Night In
• Hymns vs. CCM

The words in italics are less important than the other words in the coverlines, therefore I made these words smaller than the other words. This means that the reader will see the main words first and then look at the smaller words.

Another thing that I was told was wrong, was the reviews splash. I had written 'This month's reviews', which is what the reader would find out on the contents page. It would be more of a teaser if only the names of the bands being reviewed were on the cover, leading the reader to wonder why they are on the cover.

I added another colour to the colour scheme - white - which also flows through the magazine. On my contents page and DPS, the backgrounds are white. Therefore, white is already part of the colour scheme on these pages, but does not appear on my front cover. So I made the boxes for my reviews white, so they are different than the other coverlines.

Another thing that I changed on my front cover was the main coverline. I decided on the pull-quote that I would use for the 'title' coverline, and changed the wording on the 'description' coverline.

The final thing that I changed on my front cover was the masthead. I was told that it was too small, and indeed the convention on magazines is to have the masthead quite big so that it is instantly recognisable. Therefore, I made the masthead bigger on the front cover so that it stands out more.

Contents Page

On my contents page, I added the photo that I took for the cover story, and added the photo that I took for the News From the Ps23 Office article. I also wrote the description of the cover story and added the page that the cover story is on.

When adding the caption to the News From the Ps23 Office photo, I realised that the '6' and the '8' page numbers looked very similar. This is because the glow was so wide that the number was blurred and less easy to see. Therefore, I changed all of the page numbers' glow to 50% of what it was originally. This means that you can see the numbers better.

I also added page numbers to the bottom of my contents page, so that the reader knows which page they are on.

The final thing that I did was change my Editor's Letter so that the cover story was mentioned in it, so that it didn't seem too unimportant.

DPS

On my DPS, I changed the size of the smaller photos and made them bigger, so that you can see them better.

I also added a headline - What A Glorious Sound - and a by-line. The headline is in a font that is part of the Rockwell family, but slightly different so that it stands out from the main text. This font is called Rockwell Condensed.

The final thing that I did to my DPS was to add page numbers, so that it is easier for the reader to find the cover article when they go to it from the contents page.