AS Foundation Portfolio: October 2013

College Magazine: Evaluation

During the production of making my college magazine front cover there were many things I had to take into consideration in order for it to look like a real college magazine and so it would reach out to my targeted audience. I had to think about the typical conventions of what type of things would be included in a college magazine and the different conventions that I would have to follow in order to complete my task. These varied from the house style of the magazine, what or who would be used for the main image, what the masthead will be and what type of sell lines I would include on the cover to attract readers to my magazine.

Firstly to start off the production of my magazine I took a look at other college magazines to get inspiration for mine. Then I did a LIIAR analysis of the magazine covers to find out the type of things I would need to include in my magazine. I then went on to look at a variety of shot types to see which ones would look best on my magazine front cover, this helped me to produce my product because it helped me to look at the type of shots that were typically used in college magazines. After that I did a mood board of different images I would usually expect to be included in a college magazine, for example the college sports teams or college productions, the mood board shows the type of things I included in my magazine. After I had done all of those I went on to do a digital mock up front cover and contents page of my magazine this showed how my magazine would be set out and the contents page showed what was going to be included in my magazine.

My print product uses the conventions of real print products, you can see this because there is a barcode on the front cover which is a very important convention in all magazines. I also included a masthead which was the name of my college and the typical college student as my main image, all these conventions I used on my magazine let the audience know the intentions of the magazine and it also gives a good indication of what type of the it is targeted at. Also another convention I added to my magazine was included on the contents page and that was a competition. This is a typical convention in a lot of magazines because it gets people to buy and read the magazine because they want to win the competition prize.

But I also developed the use of conventions in my magazine by adding new media such as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter onto the cover and contents of my magazine so it gives the target audience and readers another way of interacting with the college and getting more involved with the college.

The combination of my main product and ancillary texts are effective because firstly I made sure that the name of the college (wyke) was displayed in large font as the masthead and was also displayed on the contents page, this shows the audience what institution made the magazine. Also the location in which my main image was taken was on the school grounds and my model was a student at the college, doing that was showing a theme to the audience. The font I used for the sell lines was similar to the logos font this means the magazine will be easily recognisable. The lighting on my magazine is bright and cheerful so it connotes happiness to the target audience so they will see the college and fun and a nice place to go to. The colours I used were bright and cheerful so they would hopefully make the readers feel happy which would hopefully encourage them to buy the product.

I got some feedback from a family member about my work and I learnt from them that the good points about my magazine were that the Masthead was big and bold so straight away you know what the magazine is about, they also said the spacing used was effective because the writing was not too crowed together, they also like the use of colours on the front cover of the magazine. The points to improve on were the sell lines seemed a bit too small and the colour of the sell lines and anchorage possibly blended a bit too much into the background image.

There were many different ways in which I used new media technologies to conduct my research and planning. Firstly I used safari to get images of shot types and to research existing products so I could make my final product. I also used blogger to upload all of my work onto, which meant my work was easily accessible and prevented loss of any of my work. I then used Adobe Photoshop to make my final product this was helpful and meant that I could make my magazine front cover look more professional.

I used an apple iMac to do most of my work on and I also used a camera to take pictures of my college and my models I was using for my college magazine.

Word Count:886