Evaluation of Preliminary Task

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Before designing my own student magazine I decided to look at a few existing student magazines, to do some planning and research for my own. The aspects of these magazines I looked at were the layouts, house styles and the type of brand identity. The house styles of a majority of student magazines consist of three colours for the house styles, mostly all appealing to the target audience and colours that compliment each other well on the page, yet are still bold and stand out to the audience. The masthead and the layout were bold and central throughout the magazine, and were simple to keep the magazines looking professional. Another similar aspect that these magazines shared was that the central image was a student, which obviously relates to the topic of magazine and grabs the target audience’s attention.

For the house styles of my magazine I chose the three main colours, blue black and white. These colours compliment each other well and are bold and not to bright, which connotes a professional appeal which should appeal to the target audience of students, as they are “young adults”. I took a medium close up of a student for the central image of the front cover of my student magazine to help it stand out more to the specified audience to show that it was a “student magazine”. This central image was also partly the background of the front cover of my magazine to help it look more striking and in keeping with the brief. The name I chose for my magazine was “Student Guide” which is simple, along with the simple bold font, and connotes that the rest of the magazine isn’t too complex, and it made it certain that the magazine was targeted at students.

How does your media product represent certain social groups?

The target audience age I chose was students in college and the early years of university, so essentially about 16-19. From the research and planning I’ve done, the majority of magazines were free, so I’d chosen to price mine the same. The house style colours appeal for both female and male student audiences as they are quite basic neutral colours. The central image I chose is just a simple photo of a student smiling, connoting that it is a fun easy magazine to read.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The kind of media institutions that may distribute my student magazine could be colleges and universities, as that is where the target audience would be based. They could be around the colleges/universities in places such as common rooms and libraries, so that they were easily accessible and would stand out to the audience.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for my media product would be college and early university students, so an average age range of 16-19. This is because it would contain articles targeting at an audience their age, and articles that would relate well to them.

How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted/addressed my audience by using images that would appeal for them, and also using simple bold fonts and text, and also creating a simple layout so that the read didn’t look to complex, and so that it stood out a lot better and clearer to the target audience. I kept the fonts consistent throughout so that nothing looked too out of place in the magazine, and it connoted that the magazine was going to be a simple read.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In this project I used some software called “In Design”, which can be complicated at times seeing as I had never used the software before, although it gave me the accessibility to add more features to my magazine and gave me more possibilities to make my magazine better and more professional than software such as Microsoft publisher could.