Evaluation Questions For Preliminary Task.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I have followed the typical magazine conventions, I have stuck to the brief of the preliminary task, using a DTP to manipulate my picture and I have produced a front cover of a college magazine through this. I have not challenged any forms of real media products because I have stayed within standard magazine conventions.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
With the picture on the front of my magazine I have chosen to represent the student social group. I made a positive image with a smiling young male looking very positive about student life and appearing to enjoy college.

Who would be the audience for your media product?
I have made my magazine so I hope it appeals to everyone in the environment of the Isle of Man College. I have asked for input from anyone who reads my winter issue and the idea is that students, parents and lecturers can feel free to write into the magazine and let people know what they think about college and what they think can improve anything within college or the magazine.

How did you attract/address your audience?
I put a young attractive happy person on the front cover of the magazine, this person also happens to be a student. I made the cover bright and attractive to make sure that it catches peoples eye and I was selective about the person I put on the front cover because I wanted someone that people are going to know, and he is well known around college. I chose a bright red for the colour of my text so that it would stand out against the white background and the black clothes my model is wearing. I made the topics on the front cover try and fit a range of people; all of this together should be able to attract an audience.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
All of the software I have used to create this magazine is new to me and I am still learning certain parts of it. However I am confident is editing the pictures, this is one of the things I chose to work on really hard and I am now confident in the outcome of the editing with the software I have chosen.

Preliminary Task

I am posting all the work that I have previously done before I was given access to my blog.

What do I want my student magazine to be?
I want people to view it as a friendly magazine and for it to appeal to all area's of the student body and for everyone to be confident when reading it. Something that will intrest them and to contain a very small amount of educational information but is providing a link between their social intrests and their college environment.

Before I was given access to my blog I had done sketches of the ideas for the front of my college magazine and the contents, I made notes of the basic idea's I have had for the content of my contense and the sub-headings for my front cover.

Masthead - 'In college' I chose this because it gives a clear point to what im putting in the magazine, everythign that goes on in college but more from a student angle. Other names such as 'The College News' have become massivly over used and sound very offical when really im creating a magazine specifically for the students.

I have chosen to do my masthead in the font style of 'Minya Nouvelle' with a transparent background because I chose to have my picture taken on a white background so i could have all the text on the front cover very clear. I chose to have my title in black so that it is clear to all other people. I made the masthead quite big and placed it in the center of the page at the top so people can easily see what it is called also black text on a white background is one of the most common ways showing text and it is something everyone is used to. All of these things were done to make the magazine catch the attention of the students.

Sub-headings - I have chosen several sub-headings to put on the front cover of my magazine because there needs to be something for every student and they need to see that, so putting it on the front cover is the place were it is going to attrack the most attention. The Sub-headings are;

- Exam Success! Look Inside..
To Get the attention of the very academic students working on G.C.S.E's or A Levels that really appriciate any advice from teachers.
-New Refectory Menu!
All students want to know what they are going to be eating while they are in college.
-Whats Your Ideas?
Asking for any imput into the magazine or around college, basically any ideas that any student has.
-Christmas Party!
Pictures from the college christmas party.

I have chosen to do my subheading in the font style of 'Comic Sands MS' with a transparent background because I chose to have my picture taken on a white background so i could have all the text on the front cover very clear. I chose to do the sub-headings in red, because it gives the front cover some colour, the masthead is black as is the jumper that my model is wearing and different colours against the white background really does catch the attention of people.

I took 3 possible pictures for the cover of my magazine;
-One with 2 females

I chose not to use this picture because it has a black and white background, and while taking the picture i thought that it would look effective on the front cover but after realising that the faces of the models were very dark and seeing how hard it would be to get the brightning right i decided not to use this picture.

-One with 1 Female

I really liked this pictures because it shows the christmas party well and she appears to be having a good time, but there isn't a clear background. There are some bodies in the way and there is also a lack of space at the top of the picture to insert a title. However it would be a good picture to put either on the contense or on the christmas party pages in the magazine.

-One with 1 male.

I chose  to have this picture as my front cover because it has a simple background and has a young man looking very enthusiastic about being at College, it also has lots of space around it for me to crop and edit as I please and doesn't require much altering of the image its self in means of brightning ect.

I brightned the image slightly and began messing around with fonts and begining ideas of what I was going to put on the front that students would find intresting but at the end I wasn't happy with my first cover because it looked like this.

After I had finished editing it and saved it a realised that the colour scheme wasnt balanced, there was alot of white and black and only a small amount of red and it didn't really appear that eye catching. I also noticed that the shape of the magazine wasn't quite A4 and it looked a little bit of, but if I had stretched the image it would of ruined it because the model wouldn't look natural and would ruin part of the reason I chose him for my cover. The one thing that I had forgotten to put on there was a time/term during the year so that people would know what issue is was,also I had originally thought that charging 10p for the magazine was a sensible idea, but the more I thought about it the more I decided that it is a magazine for students and not many students can be bothered to pay 10p to read a magazine about what is going on in College so I decided to make it free. I also realised that the topic's I had chosen for my front cover were not appealing to every area of the student body, there were only appealing to some, so I decided that it was time for me to try and come up with some more intresting idea's for my front cover.

 With these Idea's in mind I began re-editing my picture and I came up with another idea and I much more prefer this one.

The colours are more balanced with red, white and black on there and the shape has been corrected. I chose to make it into the winter issue that way I could include pictures from the Christmas party and that is something that alot of people are usually intrested in. I much more prefer this version of my cover, it's eye catching and simple.

 

 

 

Start of my AS Media Blog!

I have just created this blog for my AS Media coursework.