Preliminary Task - Constructing a 'fake' magazine cover

During a one off lesson my lecturer suggested to my class it would be most beneficial for us to create a 'mock' magazine cover, the genre could focus upon any topic of interest we chose, however they did highly recommend we work as a group upon this presentation, in which case we voted that the point of focus should be something we could all relate to. After much debate we finally decided to make a flat plan cover to detail information about the campus we were based at, essentially this would be a college magazine aimed at the students who attended here. For this task I had to create a 'fake' front cover and contents page of a magazine to give me the feel of how I'd incorporate ideas and important elements of a professional magazine into my own final product. This was designed to help me eliminate any flaws I might come across when creating my true magazine and to give me the knowledge how to identify them - ultimately this was to provide me with some much needed practice on how to execute conventions in the appropriate manner and to develop my editorial techniques. Moreover It was important for me to make mistakes as I'd know how to avoid them when it came to actually produce my finished idea.

As you can identify this product is not to be taken in a serious manner, I fully understand it is not to the standard of a mainstream magazine production and would never be considered for a retail environment if I produced something like this for my final piece, despite this it was simply acting as a flat plan and through making it I gained some vital informed knowledge for areas to improve and how to distribute my conventions more throughly. As it was my lecturers duty to offer me some deserved feedback they highlighted critical points I should consider improving for when the main coursework task came around :
. There was too much empty space on both the cover and the contents pages, this would make the audience assume there was not many engaging articles to consider reading, which may deter them from purchasing the produc. For when it  came to constructing my final task I would need to distribute the text more efficiently so more space was covered, yet there was no need for me to overload the page was copious amounts of features either as this could equally be as off putting to the readers.
. The text itself was very basic and had no really profound emphasis to it, which unfortunately didn't make it very appealing on the page, in this instance it could easily be overlooked by the audience. It also was unconventional in the sense it did not adhere to typical magazine font styles which can make the product undermined in professionalism. Finally the sizing was also inadequate and was lacking in largeness so the articles failed to exhibit lustre. I would need to implement a higher, dramatic, bold encased font into the features to allow them to stand out efficiently, the sizing would need to be adjusted to a more emphatic standard and most importantly I would have to conduct some background research into styles commonly used for texts in public magazines as I want to conform to the conventions as accurately as I possibly can.
. The symbols I had employed were inappropriate in the sense that they made my magazine look more dated for pre-school children and not 16-18 year old college students, in this respect I was not benefiting the needs of my target audience. I was informed I could use shapes for my final coursework piece, however they would have to be incorporated in the correct manner (such as as a circle on the cover containing information about a festival guide) otherwise they would waste space and undermine the sleek look of my production.
. It was positive that I had included the page numbers which were linked to the article besides of it, yet a conventional product would have in some circumstances 100 pages or more depending on the nature of the content and as you can note I only displayed 15. It is understandable a college magazine would be limited to such a small number due to the notion there wouldn't be a tremendous amount of events occurring in the building, still it was major for me to consider adding more for the contents page for my final outcome with it being conventional for a music product to have a vast array of features and therefore pages within its bindings.