Final Product

Evaluation

My final magazine product uses conventions which include a masthead, main image, anchorage text, sell lines, a barcode and a skyline. The reason I have followed conventions is so it looks professional and it is what you usually see on magazines. My cover has developed the conventions by placing the conventional features in the right places for example the masthead is in the top left corner so it is easily seen.

 

My final product represents a particular social group of students. This is represented by the language of this magazine. First of all the main image is of a student and the mise-en-scene is the student sitting in a computer room which connotates this magazines audience is for students that could also be interested in IT. The way he is dressed also represents what type of social group this magazine represents as he is dressed casual (e.g. denim jacket, t-shirt and his earphones are visible). The reason why I didn’t want the main image dressed in formally is because I wanted to represent normal college life.

 

The audience of this magazine would be students aged 16-18 which are in college. This is because the genre of the magazine is news, gossip and entertainment which are all very helpful for students because they will want to know what’s going on and any other news that may help them. Also to an extent this product would also be targeted at teachers to inform them the latest news in students’ life right now so they are aware of what’s going on for example exam stress.

 

I used the language of the magazine to help achieve my target audience. For example the colour scheme I used was purple, green and black. The reason I used these three colours is because purple and green are the college colours which help the magazine connect to Wyke itself. I have used black to contrast against these colours which helps emphasize the main stories and features. I have also used the composition of the main image to attract the audience. I have done this by placing the image in the centre of the page and the size of it is large and takes up the full cover. By doing this it attracts the audience and informs them that this magazine is targeted at them because of the model being similar to them.

 

I have learnt that Photoshop is the best programme for this task. This is because Photoshop allows you to edit the image in so many different ways such as crop and text to fit around the image. Whereas if you tried to complete this task on a programme such as Microsoft word you would be restricted to certain ways to edit the image. During this process I have also improved my Photoshop skills and been able to make my final product more professional by using different techniques such as drop shadow and glow to emphasize the text. These techniques helped contrast the text from the main image and made it easier to read.

Looking back I can already see a total transformation in my two final products. I can see from the perfume task that my Photoshop skills were at a low quality which reflected on my work but throughout this task I have learnt how to improve my skills. An example of this is editing the image, on the perfume image I erased too much of the models body but on this task the only edit I have used on the model is enlarged it. I prevented editing to photography because I put for thought into the composition of the image.

 

The thing I would do differently in this task would have taken a wide range of images but with a different model. The reason for this is because it may have been nice to see a different outcome of the magazine if the model, for example, was a girl stood outside of a building in Wyke.