College Magazine Evaluation

My College Magazine follows the conventions of college and lifestyle magazines that are already on the market, these are: 1 cover image that matches with the magazine (for example wedding magazines have images of dresses) I have used a conventional picture of a person happily working in a class room connecting the magazine to education. I have Included a barcode, price and issue number. I have also used sell lines as to keep the magazine simple and clear

Not only have I followed the conventions of real media products but I have also challenged them. Normally in college or lifestyle magazines the contents page is kept simple with minimal images whereas I have took the unconventional route and placed many images on my contents page. I have done this to show the wide range of topics shown throughout the magazine as it does not just cover 1 genre (for example - gardening). But I have placed the contents in a conventional way (numerical order).

My college magazine represents college students and
The college itself. The magazines content revolves around academic topics and everyday events that happen around college, such as sporting events and new equipment being installed.

As my magazine is for college students, and will cover similar college related topics each month, This will limit the kind of media institutions who would be interested in being involved with my magazine. The main media institution will be the company which produces and distributes my magazine on large scale. My magazine also has the potential to work with Internet based institutions. The magazine could generate more interest by having a website which allows people to view the magazine online, as the magazine is free this will not impact sales.

The target audience for my college magazine would be college students, whether they be teenagers or older people coming back to college. I attracted my target audience by keeping the design simple and sleek without overdoing it on the graphics side of things. I kept the images happy and the colour schemes nice and easy on the eye.

In making my magazine I have learnt how to use such programmers as Photoshop and Quark. I have learnt how the best way to create a magazine front cover is on Photoshop, but also to put each individual piece of text and image on separate layers so they can be moved and edited easily. A problem I have found is that colours on quark have to be made by you; there is a list of preset colours which you have to go through and choose to save.

During making my magazine I had trouble choosing a suitable front cover image. I didn’t have a suitable portrait image which I could use to cover the whole cover. To solve this I used a landscape image which showed two students, one working happily but the other was looking confused, this wasn’t the kind of image I wanted to display on my front cover. So using Photoshop I cropped and stretched the image so that it covered the whole cover and that the image enhanced the magazines appearance.

When I was planning my magazines I had a very clear image of how I wanted my finished pieces to look, so I drew a detailed layout that showed the exact wording and position of my text. My final product ended up being nearly identical to my plan, with just a few simple layout differences.

Time management was an issue with this magazine. I believe I spent to much time planning and perfecting the magazine before I had even started to produce it on a computer. I should have drew a rough draft, but then perfected and spent more time designing the layout whilst actually on a computer working on it.

Since working on my college magazine I have become more aware and able to follow the conventions of magazines. I have more understanding why the masthead normally is on the top, left hand corner, why tag and sell lines are used, the kind of images you need to use to promote the styles and content of my magazine.