Evaluation
Prior to
creating my own magazine I previously analysed another college magazine and
this allowed me to recognise the conventions of a magazine and even more
specifically a college magazine and effectively apply the same conventions when
making my own. I recognised that magazine mastheads were usually bold to help
it stand out which prompted me to make mine bold also. I used the same font
throughout my piece to keep consistency as using too many different fonts may
over complicate my work. Furthermore I tried to stick to a colour scheme of
yellow, blue, white and black as too many colours may again over complicate my
magazine and it may not attract readers as there’s too much things to focus on
at once. Although I recognised that mastheads were usually horizontal across
the top of the page however I decided to put mine vertically at the side of the page to
be more creative however the disadvantage of this is that if my magazine was on
a newsstand the masthead wouldn’t fully be seen which means it wouldn’t be as
successful in reaching out to the audience. My medium close up shot used of the
student allows the audience to see the facial expressions clearly which from
the picture I used they’ll get the idea that students at the college are happy.
Also the MCU allows the audience to see that the person is wearing a ID card
which without seeing the masthead they can already identify the genre of the magazine.
I also
created a contents page which wasn’t as effective as my cover page as I didn't spend as much time on it but still
has some good features such as the fact that I stuck to the colour scheme by
using yellow and black. This allowed the audience to identify the clear colour
scheme and also made it feel more like it’s from the same magazine because of
the same house style kept throughout. Also magazines usually divide their
contents page up in sections to make it easier for the reader to find exactly
what they’re looking for which is what I did. I also included topics that would
usually be in a college magazine which I think is good as it makes it more
realistic and also makes it clear what the genre of the magazine is.
After getting feedback on my work one
suggestion for improvement was that I could have added more subheadings as my
front cover as it looks empty and also that I should’ve put ‘free magazine’ at
the bottom by the barcode as prices being placed at the there is a convention of a magazine and
where the potential reader will look for the price. For the contents page I could improve
on the layout by including more pictures relating to the topic in the magazine
and also including more information on the topics. Also I think my contents
page looks rather bland so could’ve laid it out in a different way so that I can
fit more pictures and also I could’ve added more colour to make it stand out
more to draw in the audience.
When going
on to make my music magazine I’ll ensure that I’ll make a plan of how I want my
contents magazine to be laid out as I only did a plan for my cover page and I think
this is why my contents page was weaker than my cover page. Also I'll use more cover lines to make the front page more fuller and less bare. Lastly I'll use different shots to be more creative and make my magazine more interesting.
