'The official QE' (social version) and 'The official QE' (study version) are both part of the same magazine. The former acts as a front/back page to the one half of the magazine whilst the latter acts as a front/back page to the other half. The magazine therefore is readable from the back and the front, not for two different target audiences, but for the average student who enjoys reading about the social side of college as well as occasionally in need of some advice in the academic side. I based both these front pages on conventional magazine types.
As can be seen in 'Time' and 'National Geographic', I kept my second front page simple and uncluttered. I used the font 'Times New Roman' for its connotations for being simple and formal and even intelligent. I wanted to maintain this formality in the actor's facial expression. Emphasising this expression is the text 'REVISION THINKING'. This tagline leads directly to the actor's eyes when read from left to right, so we assume he too is 'revision thinking'. Also demonstrated in 'Time' and 'National Geographic' is a simple background, not distracting the reader. I mimicked this in both my covers, as the first front page displays a white background, and the second shows a blurred bricked background that was deliberately taken out of focus. The studier's edition of 'The Official QE' incorporates simplicity as a marker of academia and intelligence.
The social version of the front page shares most of its conventions with less formal magazines such as the one seen below. Similar to this one, I set the actor's face above the 'QE' title. I did not do this to the extent of the text being unreadable, but rather overlapped it only slightly to convey a 3-Dimensional effect. Although I did not complete putting the taglines onto the cover, from the text which is present it can be seen the range of colours used. I did not use too many colours but rather shades of purple, gold, red and blue, to keep the page clear and readable. The gold and purple I used in my main tagline maintained a link with the college's representative colours, and the blue headline 'QE' keeps congruity with the blue 'QE' in the studier version. The fonts are informal and arguably resemble pencil sketch marks associated with school and college (seen especially in the Headline).
I deliberately kept my actor's clothes and hairstyle very mainstream, and his expression very open. He does not fit into a certain social group as such, to keep the buyers of the magazine broad and varied. For this reason he is dressed in a very plain shirt with no links to particular trends, and does not wear jewellery or make up, as do some social groups. Therefore he is 'average', not discriminating nor resembling any one people type other than simply 'teenagers', thus maximising my buyers. However, if I were to designate a target audiance I'd suggest the people seen below.
These fairly 'average' teenagers are who I aim my magazine at, although other social groups are not excluded.
I have used programmes I was unfamiliar with when I made my front pages. The camera I used was far more advanced than any I'd used before, and although I did not use all of its features I was still able to take good quality images even though it was my first time using it. Photoshop offers many design techniques I was not used to, and again thoug I did not take advantage of all its capabilities, I still was able to experiment with its features and achieve a proffessional format. 'Blogger' and 'Dafont' were both new websites to me, and again after practice I benefitted off them.
