Front Cover and Contents Page - School Magazine

Front Cover:

A buyer’s first impression of a magazine comes from the front cover, therefore it HAS to look appealing. Most importantly you have to have a specific target audience for your magazine, whether it be for children, teenagers or adults. For my school magazine, the target audience is pupils between the ages of 11 and 18. I must ensure that on my front cover it is obvious that there is something for everyone in the magazine and this is displayed in "tags" (sub-headings.) Obviously, interest vary a lot from the age of 11 to 18 there thinking about content took time. For the younger audience, short and simple tags on exciting and interesting topics will seem more appealing to them. The older audience may find these interesting too, however they are more likely to read more serious stories, compared to the younger pupils.

This was my first attempt at my front cover. I chose to enlarge the main image filling the whole page, however at this point I have not edited it in any way. Pictures displayed down the side refer to sub-stories that will be included in my magazine. The Heworth Logo makes it obvious to pupils that it is the school magazine.


At this point I decided to change the title of my magazine. I think its catchy and will appeal to the audience more. I believe the Heworth Logo is enough to show the audience it is the school magazine. I edited the background image and made it brighter and changed the contrasts.


My last job is to add text. This is my final front cover. The short, simple subheadings are clear and effective. I made the text size for these smaller than the main headline as they aren't the focus. I added a drop shadow to the main headline just to make it stand out that little bit more.


Contents Page:

The contents page is difficult to design as you have to think thoroughly on the content for you whole magazine.

This was my first draft of my contents page. Here I have simply added text. I have thought about all of the content in my magazine and have designed a rough layout. I wanted to bring the Heworth Grange colours from the logo into the contents page, so i coloured the page numbers. Little details like this make it more obvious it is the school magazine.

This is my second draft. I have re-positioned the text as I though one column was more effective. I positioned a similar image to the main image on the front cover at the top of the page, linking the two pages together.

This is my final contents page. I have kept to a similar colour scheme to the front page (white with black/grey writing) and adding colour through the image. It is simple a simple, yet effective page. I tried to keep a balance between image and text content. Overall I am very pleased with both the front cover and contents page I have designed.