Evaluation

By way of evaluation, I feel that the prelim task of creating a suitable college magazine front cover and content page was fairly easy because I have previously used Photoshop for my GCSE media so this task just gave me the opportunity to develop existing skills. Before I began the task I looked at existing covers, from the Bodmin College Magazine and Napier Magazine, in order to establish what the common conventions were I needed to follow because as Bentley (1997) says, “The making of the new the re arranging of the old.” The main conventions I needed to follow were a large masthead, teaser, appropriate typography, issue/term and appropriate colour scheme. I followed these conventions in my work to try and recreate an original product that would represent my target audience and their needs. The Bodmin College cover I looked at had a lot wrong with it, it did not follow many of the conventions of professional covers and was very hard to read and on top of all none of the typography and the pictures where not relevant to the audience. So, I broke the conventions I observed on this cover in order to make my magazine of a much higher standard.

Personally, I found the biggest challenge was representing the needs of my target audience and acting on the feedback I got from my SurveyMonkey because I had not had to conduct and use research like this before. At GCSE level I had only had to do paper questionnaires and did not have to use as much theory to shape my ideas.

In short, my main findings from my primary audience research was that my target said they wanted art to be featured in the magazine, and to be appropriate to the age range of 17-19. I featured a story about top artist of the week to represent this need and I used images of higher year students to advertise to the audience, I also used relevant typography and colour schemes that would appeal to my youth audience.

When creating a masthead for my magazine my results from my survey showed that the audience preferred the “TIME” magazine so there fore I went for a more block/serious masthead to follow this theme and ultimately what my audience wanted. The text I used was a more modern text that was still “fun” to appeal to the lower years yet still the higher as well.

I represented my youth target audience through using young models in my images I went against theories such as Hall (1904)  who constructed the “storm and stress” model. As my figure was shown to be happy and well kept and nothing of him connoted criminal activity as Hall suggested. In terms of Uses and gratifications (Blumer and Katz 1974) my target audience would read the college magazine for personal identity according to my survey monkey.

The photos used where bright and clear I maid sure to use mid shots or close ups for the main page to make sure that the cover followed conventions. However they would have been better if I could have used a green screen professional set up as this would of allowed better lighting and a artificial background to used giving it a better magazine type of look and a professionalism I personally believe this would have also helped in making it more appropriate to the target audience as people are more likely to read the magazine if they don’t mind being seen with it. And by using a professional feel it makes it more appealing. In creating my magazine I made use of layer masks and the paint tool to insure good erasing of irrelevant objects in shot. The quick select was most likely the toll I used the most as I used it a lot to colour the font add borders and colour where relevant. I used a positive curve to add a more distinguish in colour also this however is not very noticeable.

I think the layout is what should be commonly expected from a magazine with 1 main image and other text around this helps the magazine as it will make the reader feel more able to read it or find it suitable to be seen with it. I do however think the masthead could have been improved as it slightly funny but still looks the part

The contents page featured 4 images two of students (a mid shot and a close up) and one of a suppose dance teacher (long shot) and a group shot. The layout I think appeals to a younger audience with the features of speech bubbles ect. However I do feel that the text layout is more relevant it could be improved but for a college magazine I feel it is relevant. One issue I feel with the contents is the page numberings as 22 may not be enough for common conventions of magazines. The text used is relevant to the audience as it is graffiti styled which is commonly associated to youth (the audience).

When I do my full magazine I hope to have a lot more time when editing and also I hope for a professional shoot so I can replicate pictures in the real world, which have a professional feel. I also hope to take more consideration and time and let my survey go on for more results as the amount I got for my prelim where partial scarce so I feel despite my best efforts it may still not be relevant to the audience.