Evaluation

1.  In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Looking at examples of student magazine I was able to recognise that they had many common features.  They usually consisted of a colour scheme of about 3 colours and had a student on the cover.  They had a balance between informality and professionalism which I considered to be important for developing my own magazine.  I used a general colour scheme of red, white and black, colours that connote well to a rebellious youth, yet still have an air of sophistication.  I also used a student as the model for my medium closeup cover image.  My articles were based around themes that commonly occured in student magazines such as college events, reviews and student work, whilst adding in the theme of christmas to go with the time of year.

2.  How does your media product represent different social groups?


My magazine is aimed at students my age so I made sure my magazine was designed in a way that appealed to me.  I used a colour scheme involving red to appeal to my audience as it connotes life and rebelliousness, and because it went well with black and white.  My images were all of people who were all students to keep the magazine focused on a youth demographic, ensuring it would be easy for students to relate to the contents of the magazine.  My cover image was of someone smiling, connoting happiness to encourage people to read the magazine so that they can feel happy too, and I made the image monotone so that the cover lines would stand out over the top of it.  The font for the text was simple and slightly more formal to make the magazine look more professional and help the students to feel that they are more grown up, closer to adulthood.  I made sure that the puff with 'free' on it was bold and stood out well because I wanted to ensure that the students would know straight away that the magazine was affordable for people who may not have a job yet.

3.  What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?


I think my magazine would work well for my college, because it is ideal for people aged 16-19.  This is because students at this age are still teenagers but they are wanting to be treated more like adults.  My magazine caters for this because it mixes its fun and youthful contents and images, with a professional and more grown up feel brought on by the font used and the choice of a monochrome image for the cover.  Also the professionalism will appeal to the college staff and encourage them to take the magazine seriously.

4.  Who would be the audience for your media product?


My audience is 16-19 year old college students who want to find out about what is going on in their local area and who enjoy reading other magazines that are aimed at their demographic.

5.  How did you attract/address your audience?


I attracted my audience by using a bold and strongly contrasting cover that was designed to draw you into the magazine.  The colours were simple black and white mixed with the red to make the writing on the cover stand out against the background, whilst keeping the look quite sophisticated and professional.  I didn't use lots of bright colours because I didn't want it to look busy and chaotic.  For the contents page I kept the same colour scheme and simply inverted it so that I kept up a house style for my magazine whilst creating a slightly different look for the page.  It allowed the two pages to create a striking contrast.  For the masthead of my magazine I made the word 'zone' larger than 'student' to make it striking and to create effect.

6.  What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?


During the production of my magazine I used Photoshop and InDesign.  I could already use Photoshop but InDesign was new to me.  I am used to using Microsoft Publisher for this kind of thing but found that InDesign can be a good alternative.  It was fairly easy to use but a few things such as changing the size of images and moving them was more complicated than I thought was necessary.  My photographs were taken on a digital camera which was good because it was portable and produced images of a reasonable quality.  I didn't learn anything new from this but was able to practice coming up with ideas for photo-shoots.