College Magazine Evaluation

Evaluation

Bentley once said ''The making of the new through the rearranging of the old''. Similarly, Picasso said ''Good artists copy. Great artists steal''. This means that to make a good magazine, analyse other magazines and decide what looks good. If it looks good, use it. Before creating my magazine cover, i looked at other magazine covers and looked at why the popular ones are so good and why the unpopular ones are bad. The common conventions are what makes the magazine worth reading. I first looked at the Bodmin College magazine so I could understand how magazines are made up. This was a good example because it's not really the best magazine cover around. When analysing it, I found there was too many pictures and not enough text. There was no teasers and was overall a bad cover. Instead of recreating this cover straight away, I used Survey Monkey. I took results from the target audience and created a front cover from this information. 85% of people wanted a better layout of the magazine and 62% wanted colours that reflect youth culture. This shows how the college magazine wasn't very interesting overall. I took all the results and the common conventions and created my own magazine so it was different to the current magazine but yet still includes all the things a magazine should. 

The target audience of the magazine is mainly 11-19 year olds. It shouldn't matter what sex they are as it has to appeal to everyone in school. Along with this, it should have something to make the parents and teachers want to read it. This is because it would add to the amount of people reading it and it might include some important information for them. According to my survey, the main age range who reads the magazine is 14-16 year olds. This meant that out of all the age groups, i should focus more on them. This is why i've used the models I have, they are the same age as the most important group. Along with this, it goes against the theory by Stanley Hall. He believed that 'Criminal activity would increase between the ages of 12 and 24' and 'the common mood of teenagers is depressed'. My cover disproves that as my main image is just a teenager posing doing no harm and my other image is a boy standing up straight with a slight smile. This shows that teenagers can be happy and don't have to commit crimes. 

I used photoshop to edit my images before using it on my cover. I had to crop out the background using a quick selection tool on photoshop. Although, while using this tool I found out that most of the background was a similar colour to the model which made it difficult to crop out well. This is when I had to use the magnetic lasso tool and eraser. Using these, I could simply highlight the specific areas with ease and clear any area I didn't want or need. Other than that, I used the blur tools and burn tools just to make the photos really stand out. I also used the airbrush to smooth the photo. If I could go back over it, I would have tried to make the images a lot smother as from close up they're quite blurred and it doesn't look as good.

"The view that the internet and new digital media as an optional extra is replaced with the recognition that they have fundamentally changed the ways we engage with all media"(David Gaunlett 2007). I believe that quotes like this are the reasons I made the magazine cover. I think it means that in order to make successfull media products, you need to use a range of media devices. This is why i've used programmes like photoshop. Without these programmes, I wouldn't be able to really connect with my target audience. I have also done this by simply using Blogger. With this, I can easily update each post for the audience to see and read through at their own pace. I believe this all helps support Gaunletts theory.

Overall, I know that I have made a better version of the Bodmin College magazine. I have stuck to the common conventions of magazines and improved the original design completely. It doesn't use a random range of photos mashed together to make it look interesting, it uses a straight mix of information with photos to back up the stories. Apart from that, my magazine cover and contents page are far from perfect. If I had better tools and programmes to edit the photos and text I could make a very good magazine but as i'm only making a Bodmin College magazine it's not really that well done. If I could redo it, I would also try to make it more for both sexes instead of just boys. I would use a range of students on the pages instead of only having male models so it appeals to a wider audience.

Typography:
I think the typography works well together. You could say that the Masthead doesn't go properly with the rest of the text but I chose it because it's very similar to a lot of the fonts you'd see when looking at school fonts. Other than that, the rest of the text is the same as the official Bodmin College logo. I've only used the same colours as the logo and the Masthead which helps the audience actually make their way through the cover and contents easily. I think this is a main problem with magazines nowadays. A lot of them use too many different colours and fonts which makes it difficult for the reader. It makes it hard to stay focused on one part of the page.

Images:
The images have both ups and downs. There are some good aspects but some bad ones. I think it's good because i've only used a few pictures and they're not very overpowering. This makes the text stand out just as much as the pictures yet doesn't make it hard to read. On the other hand, i've only got two images on the cover. If I coud change it, I would have a couple more smaller images just to have something else on there. I think this would make the magazine as a whole appeal to a lot more people as it's more to look at.

Conclusion:
Overall, I think that both my cover and contents pages follow the common conventions and appeal to the target audience well. My cover page serves it's purpose well as you can see and read all the different pages and it has photos to back up the story. Along with this, it's not overpowering at all and it goes well with the colour scheme. This is also the case for the contents page as i've used black and red text to go with the clothes that the models are wearing. Apart from this, they aren't the best designs for cover and contents pages. They're both a bit boring at the moment and I doubt it would really get a lot of students to read further. If I could go back then I would change some of the design, but right now i'm happy with the result.