‘Wyke Magazine’; Evaluation.
Whilst creating my magazine, I had one foremost thought in mind; the codes and conventions of college/school magazines. I decided that I should follow in the professional’s footsteps and follow them. This resulted in me including the following conventions of a college magazine:
· I have used a large, easily viewable (from a distance) title which clearly states the college name in the usual Wyke lettering so it can be recognised easily by means of institution. The beginning part of the title is purposely situated on the top of the ‘left-third’, allowing western audiences (the location of the target audience) would be able to distinguish it from other magazines.
· I have also included a mast-head and a colour scheme to my magazine, again following conventions, in order to further make my magazine seem professional and give sufficient amounts of information at the top of the page. This is where the target audience are most likely to look for the contents of the magazine. The colour scheme, put simply, allows the magazine to look the same throughout and be easily recognised by the target audience.
· The conventional layout, which I used, features a masthead, a large centred image (which would primarily sell the magazine) a headline, relating back to the main image and situated next to it in large lettering, a date, smaller images which refer back to the sub-headings, in smaller lettering, next to the main image, and a barcode.
I don’t believe I have challenged any conventions besides the placement of my picture slightly less centred that it ought to be, but this was a conscious idea as I needed room to place text.
My college magazine represents the ‘indie’ social group as happy and cheerful people who wear whatever they want, whenever they want. The main image connotates Wyke’s tolerance for such styles, and the use of accessories such as earrings and a large scarf connotate this too. This is a type of media language called ‘mise en scene’. It also represents teenage social groups as simply fun, and not anything like the common archetype/stereotype which they are commonly referred to. The institution which will distribute my product will be the college itself, secondary schools (for secondary school students who are still undecided about their future) and WHSmith. I have decided upon using WHSmith to sell my product as they pretty much sell any text product, and is a well-known and trusted store. The media text (my magazine), however, will be designed by the Media students of Wyke College. This will result in my magazine being for the students and not mixed up with anything else, excluding the small section for secondary school children. I realised that the secondary school magazine, which I deconstructed, was created by the British Government, and seemed to be widening its target audience too far. I intentionally avoided this and simply aimed for one particular social group: teenagers.
My target audience for this magazine was teenage Wyke students, and not adult students, studying at Wyke College. I decided upon this target audience because it would cater for them a lot more than anyone else, and a magazine made for teachers, in my eyes, is just pointless. I attracted this audience by using a teenage, pretty girl on the front cover to attract both male and female audiences. Females would idolise her, whereas boys may have other motives, or even be friends with her! Other ways in which I addressed my audience was by offering free tickets to a football match between the local team and a top premiership team. This was a marketing ploy as it is in fact a raffle which is really being held at Wyke College at the time of this magazine. This does, however, address the audience as many students will be fans of the local football team, or just football in general.
I used different modern technologies in creating this media text such as Adobe Photoshop CS3 and CS4, Microsoft Publisher and an old 3D text creator, which ended in disaster and therefore didn’t use it. However, the other two computer programs allowed me to edit my pictures and text, making the text my own unique text. Microsoft Publisher allowed me to set my front page layout effectively as it is one of the best programs for publishing. This preliminary task has also enabled me to broaden my ability to use DTP programs. I have also learnt to learn from my mistakes and therefore did two versions of my front cover which I have added to my blog to show you how I learnt from my mistakes.
If I was to go back in time and redo this whole exercise, I would pay much more detail in to my drafts and deconstruct other magazines more effectively. I would also take lots of photos, then afterwards deciding which ones are worthy of my magazine front cover. The disadvantages of my final front cover include the lack of mise en scene for the most part and the lack of a background of Wyke which allowed me to still place text on which can be easily viewable. However, I think I did quite well in the way I laid out my front cover and the way I didn’t forget about the minor details such as the barcode, the price tag and the magazine date and issue. One thing that sticks out the most to me as a disadvantage of my magazine front cover is the Masthead. The masthead simply doesn’t go with the colour scheme of my magazine and stands out far too much. I also didn’t use programs off the internet which allowed me to create my own text from scratch, and instead opted for a simpler route of editing and changing the size and colour of text already installed on to Microsoft Publisher. To bring this to a conclusive ending, my magazine had its good points, bad points and followed the usual conventions expected of a college magazine; resulting in my magazine not really standing out amongst the crowd. However, it does get the point across to my intended target audience of what I was stating in my magazine and does cater for them as well as I possibly could have done.
Word Count: 1,051
