Final post (for now)

I have finnished my student magazine, and this is my last post untill I start my music magazine.

Thanks for commenting on my posts :)

Evaluation

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

The key ingredients of a Student magazine are a Masthead, strap line and banners.  A student magazine should also include relevant articles and should contain a combination of useful and interesting features.

                          

The magazine on the left is my magazine, and the magazine on the right is a real student magazine.  A bold masthead is a feature of both magazines, along with a strapline.  The magazine on the right, first car, has a banner over the front.  This leaps out at you and grabs your attention.  I have not put a griping banner on the front, instead I have edited the sign in the photo, and put some cover lines on it, I have also shaped this text to fit on the sign.

Overall I think I have stayed within the conventions of magazine creation.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine is aimed at a particular audience, as a student magazine, I would hope that students would be the group to buy it.  The images I have used are of students, for students.  Most of the articles will attract a student to buy the magazine, but the “on the farm” article is the odd one out.  I decided to include this article as a bit of a joke, as it implies that students are the animals.

The images on my front cover are quite large, I hoped to grab an audience with the high contrast image.  There are lots of images on my contents page, this is to give people a preview of what is in the article, and to help draw them in.  

In this magazine I have represented students and teenagers well, but I have avoided the general stereotype of drunk and badly behaved students.  In other ways I have stayed within the stereotypes as I have offered student and teen orientated articles.

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

Most of the student magazines I looked at were from universities.  My publication would be produced and payed for by the student council.  Some of the cost would be covered by the price of the magazine, but it wouldn’t be cost effective, so funding would be required.

Who would be the audience for your media production?

The target audience for my magazine would be teenagers and students around the age of 16+.  My magazine would be aimed at everyone male and female, by including articles that would appeal to people regardless of what they are studying.  To choose the content of my magazine I listened to the audience feedback and decided on articles that were the most popular.

How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract my audience I did a questionnaire on my blog.  I then looked at the results and decided to put in the most popular things.  I also made my magazine appeal to the target audience by having captivating titles, and an appropriate photo on the front.  My magazine has a friendly persona and the articles are based on what people want.  I also posted drafts of my front cover and contents pages to see what people thought, I then improved them based on the feedback that I got.

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

Technology played a big part in the creation of my cover and contents.  I used Publisher to lay out the pages and my camera was very useful for taking the photos.  I used a piece of software called Adobe Lightroom 3 to edit my photos.  My blog is a major piece of technology that has helped with both marketing and research.  Through out the process I have learned how to use publisher, as I have never used this before.

These are two screen shots of my blog.  The post that is shown is 3 drafts of my front cover, in the second screen shot has helpful comments from other people in the class and the teacher.

This is a screen shot of publisher, it shows my final contents draft.  Some of the useful tools in publisher are the guide lines tool.  It put dotted lines on the page so you can line columns of pictures and text up accurately.

Contents Page

This is my contents page design.
Please leave some comments bellow with what you think.

Front Cover

This is my final front cover design.
What do you think about it?  Please leave me some comments.

Contents Pages

These are the drafts of my contents page, please comment on which one you like, and what is good about it.