Evaluation

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

Before I started creating my magazine, I looked at examples of other student magazines, these gave me ideas in to what kinds of things were in student magazines. After this it was clear what key things needed to go into a student magazine. it had to included information about the college and the courses that it offered. I included a section on students work in my contents page. I also found that it shouldn't be to overly formal it should be informal. To show this in my contents page and on my front cover I showed not necessarily formal things that students like, such as 'reviews and top book, movie and music'. Theses were in my contents page, I used text with some pictures so it didn't look to formal.

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


Because the magazine is aimed at the student audience I wanted it to look like something I would like to read myself. I took photographs of a friend in the class around where my college is, I thought this was a good idea, rather than taking photographs of somewhere that isn't around the college and people might not recognize.  For the front cover of the magazine I used a mid close up shot of a friend, I thought it was a good idea that she was looking at the camera, as it would add a more friendly and inviting aspect the the magazine. In the contents page I drew a picture of a christmas tree, I felt that it would give the magazine a fun aspect to the magazine. I also used a picture that I had taken previously in my test shots and edited it so it looked like it was sketched, this related to one of the features that is on the contents page. I kept the text simple on the front cover so that the font wasn't to "in your face" when you first look at it.

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


I think it would be good to sell this magazine in the college, in the library or reception area because those two places have connotations as somewhere everyone goes, but there could be an online version for students who might not have time to go and get the magazine. Also if this was available online, other colleges would be able to look at it. I included events in my magazine, so if this was available to other colleges as well, people from that college might be interested in the same events.

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


My audience is 16-18 year olds (college students) it would be a magazine aimed at boys and girls.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?


I attracted my audience with bright bold eye-catching colours, with my image choice (because it was of a student at direct mode of address) and my various fonts. I used a varied colour selection, but I was careful not to use loads of colours because if I did, the magazine would look more for the younger audience rather than the older one. I used fonts that looked fun and interesting and engaging, I also kept the colour of the main font (not the masthead and puff) to black and white so that it's a sense of formality. The background for the contents page I wanted to be like a rush of colour when you open the page, to make you want to look more into the magazine to see what's in it.  I changed the colours many times so that I used the colours from the front cover in the contents page so that it didn't look to out of place and really informal.

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


Most of the technology that I used in this process I have used already in other lessons such as cameras and photoshop, though I have never used them in magazine design so I learnt a few new things like how to transfer photos to indesign from a camera and photoshop. I hadn't used indesign before so I found that difficult to use at first but after a while I got used to it and found it was almost an advanced version of Microsoft Publisher. I have used blogger before but as I was blogging I found there was a new version of it and I had to learn how to do that, and how to convert files into JPEC images.