College Magazine Evaluation.

College magazine evaluation

In AS media I have been learning about the different conventions of magazines and what I need to include if I was to create my own magazine. As a consequence of learning this I had a task to create my own college magazine front cover and contents page.

In preparation for my front cover I needed guidance so I created a plan for my magazine using Microsoft word, with this plan I annotated typical magazine conventions which I would be featuring in my own magazine for example: cover lines, colour scheme and issue date. Creating a plan helped me when creating my actual front cover because I already knew what I needed to include and all I had to do was put my ideas together.

To create my front cover I used Adobe Photoshop which I found challenging. This was because the main focus of my front cover was going to be my model, which had to be a student and I had the responsibility of taking the pictures myself, I found this hard because I couldn't find anywhere with a plain wall and good lighting, as a consequence of not finding good lighting the background of my magazine looks as if it has a red tone, I tried to minimise this by adjusting the brightness and saturation of the image however no matter what I done the image still had a red tone to it. In addition to this I had no previous experience of using Photoshop therefore I didn't know how to get rid of the red tone so I therefore had no choice but to adjust the brightness and saturation. Next I had to decide on a font for my masthead, cover lines etc. I found this quite easy as I had a vision already of a simple but bold font which was easy to read, reasons for this is so that it’s easy for the reader to identify the magazine and it makes cover lines more attractive because they don’t look too long or complicated. As well as choosing a font I had to pick a font colour which would make up a colour scheme for my magazine, I chose two shades of blue (electric and neon) for my masthead, cover lines and issue date and 2 shades of purple (neon and violet) for my main cover line about the featured student on the front cover. I chose a colour scheme to show that I have an element of organisation in my magazine but to also attract a loyal audience. I teamed up with a classmate and we both gave each other some feedback on what went well and what we needed to improve on, we both agreed that ‘the blue on beige background is easy on the eyes and the font is large and easy to read.’ However one thing I could do to improve my front cover is making the price of the magazine bigger so that (potential) readers know the magazine is free attracting a larger audience.

To create my contents page I had to use InDesign, however I didn't read the brief thoroughly and I created my contents page on Photoshop instead, which I found very tricky because Photoshop did not have the right tools for editing and positioning text. I carried on my colour scheme of different shades of blue (neon, electric and pale) this is because I wanted to give my magazine as a whole consistency and make it look organised. On the left side of my page I had a column including the contents of my magazine with 3 main headings (hot topic, news and limited). I done this to make it easier for readers to identify articles they are interested in reading but to also segment the different genres featured in my magazine. Also on the center left of my page I used a thin electric blue text box to create a small column page numbers for the articles on the left. I used a coloured text box to make it easier for readers to navigate through my magazine but to also create a break between the text on my contents page and the column of pictures on the right side of my contents page. The right hand side includes three pictures that are included in articles in the magazine and each picture includes a page number on the bottom right corner of the picture which attracts more readers to those specific articles because the reader may find the picture attractive. Also on the bottom right corner of my contents page I included a free lunch voucher this helps to attract a loyal audience as they will expect a freebie every month a new issue of the magazine in released. I found the journalistic part of the contents page fairly easy I had previous experience in making magazines and contents pages in general. However from audience feedback and my own opinion I feel that I could have made the font of the contents smaller and included more articles and linked them to the pictures on the right hand side of the page.

From this task I have come up with four main features I want to include in my music magazine. One being a consistent colour theme as it brings the whole magazine together. Secondly I would like to research ways to edit pictures in Photoshop so my front cover looks professional and has no faults to it. Thirdly i am going to do a lot of research in my specific music genre so I know what my target audience wants in the magazine so overall the content of my magazine is useful to my readers, and lastly I am going to create a plan of my front cover and contents page so that i don’t have to waste time about thinking of articles to include in my contents page.