Secondary Research

The LC

The Lewisham College magazine is a prime representation of the outcome we want to achieve. Whilst there are some positive aspects to it's content and design ideas, changes could definitely be made.

A main weakness we documented was the lack of consistency throughout the entire publication. Colours and fonts changed drastically from page to page, making it obvious that each page of the magazine was designed by different people. For example, below is a header for one of the pages 

For example, above is a header for one of the magazine's pages, when looking at this page of the publication we could see it was created to celebrate the success and singular achievements of five gold award winning students. But, all of our group came to the conclusion that the page does not attract the reader to it and the design work is boring and extremely basic. The font and title should be more eye catching and graphically designed to reflect the 'gold' theme for the awards and bring a student audience to the magazine. Overall the result of this is amateurish. 

Once again, this design is plain and shows that there is no repeating house-style from the last page to this one, something which as a group we regarded to be very important. We can understand that if there is a theme to the article written, it is a good idea to enhance that but there should still be a recognisable scheme to the whole magazine.  

MidKent College Student Mag

Compared to the LC magazine, MidKent's student publication is much more fresh and slick on the whole. It is the best magazine we have found that we think our design can relate to because the content is easy to digest and the design looks simple and attractive therefore young people will be more likely to pick the publication up.

As a group we really like this front cover, the white block writing on top of this photographic background is quite engaging and fits the specific audience the magazine are trying to interact with. As the front cover is an extremely vital part of the project, we want to do something strong like this. 

You can see from the above image that this magazine has a much more simplistic approach. However unlike 'The LC' it has impact. The text is very easy to digest, the page layout isn't over the top and it has a good amount of colour. Inspiration will definitely be drawn from this page in our own magazine, in particular the blocked capitalised heading is something we may replicate.