Wednesday, 3 November 2010

Magazine Evaluation


In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Who would be the audience for your media product?
How did you attract/address your audience?
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?


1. My media magazine product has a typical layout of any real magazine product. It includes a masthead which is at the top of the cover; every magazine will have one of these, it also includes cover lines, a few little notes around the main picture briefly indicating what you will find included inside the magazine. The main picture is usually a person, generally of the person top half from their hips upwards. A front cover is often bright and colourful; this is to catch a reader’s eye and to draw in customers. That style of writing and colours on my magazine slightly differs from that of a real magazine due to the fact that mine is a college magazine, which is a niche market a slightly different market to what any other magazine which generally target a larger audience. Also, my magazine doesn’t have a barcode, this is as I decided to make mine free for the first issue at college to try and promote the magazine for the following issues to come.
2. Magazines will all have a target audience; some magazines will have a lot larger audience than others depending on the magazine you are trying to sell. This depends greatly on the colours, font and styles that you use. If you were to use bright and colourful font and images, you would think its going to be a happy and friendly to read magazine, where as if you were to use dark colours you relate this to maybe something quite gothic nowhere days. I think my college magazine hits quite a mix between both male and females, I think some of the colours are fairly feminine but will be eye catching and appealing to all students within college.
3. I think my media product would be distributed by the college student council, I feel it would be very popular amongst students. This magazine is all about bringing college students together, and I believe it will do just that. It would be in the colleges’ best interests to consider publishing the magazine on at least a monthly basis. I believe it wills it is the key to bringing students closer, a great source of advertisement to reach the whole college and get everyone communicating.
4. The audience of my product will be people interested in the college mainly; those who want to get involved and have an interest in either other people at college or the latest news around college. I have also made the magazine ‘Revolution’ free for the first issue to encourage a large audience within the college community.
5. I think that I have attracted my audience by using a range of different colours and bright eye catching colours. My font is also rather bold, catching the eye of passing people. I have also used a lot of terminology that I believe relates to students, and that they will be able to easily understand.
6. The main programme that I have used whilst creating my college magazine ‘Revolution’ was Photoshop. I am pleased to say I am a lot more familiar with this programme after using it for a moth, seen as I had never used it before. On Photoshop I learnt how to cut and crop pictures on to different layers, and also used to ‘lasso’ tool many times to cut around pictures, this then allowed me to make to picture more obvious and add affects to them to make them more appealing and eye catching. Using this programme has allowed my finalised work to look a lot more professional.

Friday, 1 October 2010

Friday, 24 September 2010

Graphs To Explain The Results Of My Questionnaire's





The results from the first pie chart shows that more female college students read the college magazine than males. This suggests to me that I need to include something more that will appeal to male students, maybe a more developed sports section.


The second chart shows that amongst students most tend to read magazines about 2/3 times a week. But, then some will only read it occassionally but others read magazines everyday. As it is a college magazine, there is only a certain amount of infomation that is appropraite to put in it, and as we don't have such advance technology at college as big companies it would be difficult to produce a magazine on a daily basis, even produce 2 a week would be a task for the college magazine production team. This is why I plan to produce a college magazine once a week, on a Monday.This will  report on the previous weeks activities and sports games, and tell the reader the upcoming events for the week.

Questionnaire   
Gender: Male           Female

Age bracket: Under 10     11-15     16-21    22-30     31-45    45+

Do you prefer to see a male or female on your front cover?

How often do you read magazines?

Everyday
Couple of times a week
Occasionally
Never

What masthead (title) would you like to be on the front of the magazine?

College magazine
Revolution
Farnham College
Other


What prices range would you be willing to pay for a college magazine?

10p-20p
30p-50p
50p-£1.50
£1.50+

What do you enjoy reading in your college magazine?

Celebrity gossip
Sports magazines
TV news
Fashion
Real life
Other

What would you prefer to see on the front cover?

Male
Female
Don’t mind

When your favorite magazine releases a new issue how do you normally hear about it?

Advertisement
Television
Internet
Word of mouth
Other

If you are reading a magazine how many people do you like to see on the front cover?

1
2
3
4+

Which typography would you prefer on the front cover?

Normal
Italic
Underlined
Other

We as the magazine editor will be designing a double page spread, would you like this to relate to the front cover?

Yes
No

What colours do you find eye catching and would want to see on/in the magazine?

Baby pink/ baby blue
Bright colours
Warm colours
Dark colours
Soft colours 




From the information I have gathered, I can tell that more females read the college magazine than males, these means that I can do one of two things, either write more articles that would appeal to males to try and encourage them to read it, or keep writing what I am for females.

Most people didn’t mind who was on the front cover of the college magazine, so I have decided that I will put on both.  I also discovered from my market research that most people would be willing to pay on average about £1.25 for the college magazine. But when I looked into this further I realized that most colleges don’t charge at all for their students to read their college magazines, so if I wanted to reach a larger audience I would make the magazine free and possibly ask for a small donation to go towards the costs of printing etc.

The majority of people like to know what is going on in and around college so they can keep up with the latest gossip, and I also realized that people quite liked the idea of the college magazine being called “Revolution’ which I also think is a good choice as it is original and an interesting name.

My audience told me that when they hear about the favorite magazine releasing a new issue they normally hear about it from other people or see picture advertisement.

They told me that they like to see bright colours to catch their eye, but that aren’t to busy that they hurt your eyes. The audience filling out the questionnaire didn’t mind what font was on the front cover, but something that would be appealing and interesting.  

Thursday, 16 September 2010



Codes and Conventions 


There are 3 categories of codes that are used to convey meanings. These are: 

  • Technical codes. 
  • Symbolic codes. 
  • Written codes. 
Technical codes which includes camera techniques, framing, depth of field, lighting and exposure and juxtaposition. 

Symbolic codes,  that refers to objects, settings, peoples body language, clothing and colour. 

Written codes, the language which is used and the effect it would have on the reader/audience. 






Magazine Front Cover Ideas