Evaluation: Preliminary Task

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

When designing and creating my own college magazine cover and contents page, i did follow the conventions of real media products. For example, my masthead was at the top of the page, typically like a real magazine. I had a central image like most real magazine covers do, and text on the front page. I also believe i followed the conventions for a contents page, however i think my contents page broke the conventions slightly of a real magazine as i didn't use just text, i used shapes to help form my page. Also i changed the rotation of the writing making it look less like a real magazine.

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product mainly represents a teenage, young, social group. I used an image of a student in the college on the front cover. I decided I wanted him to be posing with a book as this would appeal to other college students, so that it was clear it is a college magazine. He was dressed in his own clothes, which were stylish and would attract young readers. I did this deliberately so that the magazine would appeal to young readers such as college students. However I believe that the magazine could also appeal to a slightly older audience too, as teachers or adults who take college courses could read it. For the contents page, I also followed these conventions. I included pictures of students within the college, all with happy expressions, which is typical of most real magazines. In these images, the models also had props such as books to show that they are students and that studying can be fun too, as their expressions show they are happy.

Question 3: How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted my audience by using different fonts and colours within my magazine. I didn't use a typical, standard font for the front cover as I thought this would be boring and wouldn't appeal to younger readers. So, instead I used a more appealing font, which would catch the readers' eye. The photography also would persuade a young audience to read the magazine as it includes images of students of the same age as the targeted audience, so they would relate to the magazine. I used standard English for my pages as although I was targeting a young audience I thought it would be inappropriate to use slang, as it would look unprofessional. It is important to use the right fonts when designing a magazine because they need to appeal to the correct audience. For example if you were creating a magazine for small children you would use something big, bright and fun looking, not a boring, plain and dull font. The use of clothing, jewellery, styling, hair style, are also factors in attracting your audience to your product because they should be dressed appropriately and look interested in what they are being photographed to do. For example if you had a model who was very scruffy looking and had a blank expression on their face, this would not help to attract your audience. It is also good to have the model at a similar age to the target audience because this makes the audience more inclined to purchase the product. People look for something eye catching an interesting to read about. We know that 40% of all magazine purchases are determined by the content of the front cover, instead of brand loyalty. So, this shows that the cover and contents pages are the most important and need to be interesting as well as suitable for the target audience.

Question 4: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout the process of creating this product, i have realised that it is very important to have a suitable and well photographed image. For example, it can't be at a strange angle, with poor lighting or of something that doesn't relate to the subject at all. The lighting needs to be correct, giving enough light to see the subject but could also include shadows and highlights to make it a more interesting image.
Photoshop is another important element which is included in creating the product. I used photoshop to manipulate my image, making it more suitable. I used the 'magnetic lasso' tool to cut the background out from my image as i thought it would look better and stand out more without the background. I also used some of the 'filter' tools, such as 'render' to adjust the lighting of my image.
The technology was enabling enough for me to create my product. However i think there were a few thing which limited the creative process. For example it was hard to make the images on the contents page look professional as the technology didn't provide enough tools which could help me blend them well.

Audience Feedback:

"It looks really professional."

"the colours and images work really well together and the layout has been put together well."

"It looks well constructed."