Evaluation

When I studied both college magazines and magazines available in a high street shop with a similar target audience I saw that they both contained the same features. When I was creating my own cover for a college magazine I included many of these conventions, however on the cover I did not want to include a barcode as I personally don’t think they look good on a cover. If I was to develop this magazine I would have the barcode on the back cover.

            I chose to have red and white coloured font on my cover because my magazine is aimed at both genders and I feel like these colours don’t gravitate to a particular sex, for example I think if I used pink writing on my cover then males would be less likely to buy the magazine.

            I think my magazine represents teenagers in education because I tried to make it as relatable to this age group as possible, for example I asked my friend Tara to be the model for the cover because I wanted my cover to be relatable to the readers and as Tara is a student I felt that it would make the magazine more personal. I also wanted this to be the case with the name of the magazine, I chose ‘Student’ because it’s something that all the people who the magazine is available to have in common and as previously mentioned I think it makes it more relatable.

            I have tried to make the cover eye catching by increasing the brightness of the main image and making the text stand out by using shadowing effects. When I was looking at existing products I saw that some had specific themes for a specific issue, I thought I would try this and decided to go with ‘transport’ because all students have to get to college in one way or another so I thought that it would appeal to a wide audience and the articles could be informative and entertaining. I thought about other themes such as ‘college fashion’ but I didn’t think it would appeal to as many people. Although the magazine is aimed at students I think that students and parents would be interested in buying it too because I think that the magazine looks quite sophisticated and not childlike.

            After looking back at my perfume ad I think I have improved my Photoshop skills because I think the overall appearance of the project looks a lot more professional than the perfume ad, however I still think that I am getting used to how it works as it took me a while to get all the elements just how I wanted them.

            I think if I was to do this project again I would make the focus of my main image a bit bigger as the background take up most of the frame, I like the name of my magazine so I would keep that but maybe I would change the font colour to purple to fit in with the theme of Wyke as this the colour of their logo. I also think that I would screen shot my progress along the way and upload it to my blog because although I posted the required tasks there I think if I could show the entire process it would make it a lot clearer.

            Overall I really enjoyed doing this project, I found it really interesting and fun. After reflecting on this task I now know what things I can improve on for the next one!