Friday 11 December 2015

WEBSITES Sample sites I've analysed

All of the following have been analysed in some detail - some feature in your mock exam.

[exam sites]
Pilgrim (student; pop/Indie band) [blog]

[not exam]
LittleMonsters (Lady Gaga fans) [blog]
Sly Antics (UK Indie band) [blog] - note: by unfortunate coincidence, they changed their website almost within hours of my reviewing what is now their old one!

Tuesday 8 December 2015

MAGAZINE Some fresh ideas for design features

Having considered the sample range of magazine covers, just some of the ideas we picked up on are:

  • allowing the subject to cover part of the masthead; the Look example adds the idea of partly doing this but also bringing the title back on top of the subbject (the 'loo' and 'k' are different layers)
  • using 4 colours (more gets messy, but may be appropriate for tween/younger audiences)
  • varying font, size, case and colour within a story trail
  • using lines to separate story trails - Rolling Stone takes this a step further with nice graphic design effects
  • using sticker-style circles, including to highlight price
  • using solid shapes (we saw triangles as well as circles and squares, rectangles...) to put trails in
  • using colour outlines around fonts
  • making a font 'see-through'
  • framing the trail linked to the cover star over their body
  • creating a shape/3D effect with text, as with the di Caprio Empire cover
  • highlight numbers as a means of emphasizing value

MAGAZINE Some sample covers

From a very simple google search of 'magazine front cover' I found all of these - many of which are linked to analysis, and some of which are actually student productions ... do you think your research is as good as it can be?








We learnt a lot from this - look at the font variety: case, size and colour!



An example of a student production - see their blog guide here.