College Magazine Evaluation

My magazine cover uses the conventions of real media products and displays them to my pleasing. I have tried to incorporate many of my favourite elements of real magazines into my own and have twisted them slightly in order for them to suit my preference. In terms of development I have taken the microelements from other magazines and applied them using my own tools and style. I believe this challenges many forms of real media products as my cover displays a unique and understanding style.

In psychographic terms the audience for my magazine would have to be; aspirers and individualists aged 16 – 21 being both male and female. However I also believe that other groups such as traditionalists may find my cover attractive as I have used a much more sophisticated approach to creating a college magazine than other people targeting the same audience. For example, I have chosen to use a serif font for the masthead instead of the obvious choice being sans serif as in my opinion this conveys a more professional look and feel.

In order to address my audience I have chosen to go for a rather mixed style of traditional and unique editing. I have done this by incorporating my favourite aspects of each style and coordinated them in colour and positioning which in effect portrays a calm, approachable feel.

From constructing this product I have learnt that in order to gain an attractive style that appeals to a wide audience can really only be achieved when using modern technologies such as Photoshop and Quark express. Both of these can be used in order to change the appearance of a subject effectively creating a better and more assuring product. For example many of todays top magazines use software such as Photoshop in which they can airbrush people to give the aspect of perfection coinciding with believability. This proves how important technology of today has become and the effect it has on making a successful media product.

College magazine cover page

This is my magazine cover, here i have incorperated an image of a friend and photoshopped it to produce a much more professional look and feel to it.

College mag contents page

This is my final magazine contents page. I have taken numerous elements from my research into other mags and put forth a selection of my favourite in order to make this.

College Magazine Planning

My magazine is going to be produced for a male audience aged 16-21.
I have chosen to bese my magazine soley around a younger males lifestyle and will try to conote:

- Energetic
- Self confidence
- Gagetry
- Healthy etc.

The magazine will consist of a variety of psychographics in order to attract a wider range of potential audience.

For my cover i am going to compose a range of different images on Photoshop and choose one that i beleive suits my personality best.

Time to start Shooting!

These are the magazines we have chosen to compare:

http://uusu.org/files/ufouriaaprilweb.jpg

http://www.campuslifemagazine.ca/images/campus_life_magazine_cover_spring2008_large.gif

http://www.gerasimodesign.com/magazineCover2Linkin.jpg

1) From looking at the three magazines we have discussed and decided that they all have the same target audience which is the student catagory. The use of language is very discreet with all of them, however the Campus magazine includes numerous straplines which we think makes the magazines appear more professional. The mastheads of all the covers are in Sans Serif format which makes the impression that the magazine is quite modern. As for the colour throughout each of the magazines, we can see that they are all very bold and two of them are very warm in saturation. In contrast to these, the campus cover is far more believable as it has been shot using an array of 'cool' colours.

2) Out of the three magazines we have decided that the Campus magazine is the most genuine looking and therefore we would most likely read this. We have chosen this cover because of how the coverlines attracts our attention.

3) We have chosen to analize the Global music magazine.

The kind of person who would read this magazine would clear be a wide range of people as it has included very different genres of music on the cover.

The psychographic area this magazine falls under is clearly the Radical category as we can see that it appears to be quite rebelious as the cover model is dressed to suite more of a 'Rock' style.

The magazine itself is suited to a unisex audience as it is soley about music, however the rebelious appeal of the magazine could relate more towards the male audience.

One final point we would like to make is that the magazine is very eyecatching and if seen on a shelf, it would obviously stick out and draw in lots of attention.