Evaluation of my media product

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
  
  The key ingredient of student magazine is of course the front cover page. It attracts the target audience. The picture used on the front cover must be attention-grabbing, interesting and good quality. Usually it’s a mid close up portrait picture of someone significant and who would be mentioned in the magazine later on (the headmaster, new member of staff, head of boys/girls boarding, etc).
  Title is another important part of creating a student magazine. It must suit the target audience and usually student magazines have a title which is somehow connected to the name of the school, some of my classmates tried to connect the title of their student magazine with the name of our school – St. Edmunds College. One of the magazines was called the “Edmundians”. I, however, decided to create a title that will not directly speak of the college or students, I used an abstract title “INSIDE” and I believe it arouses teenagers’ curiosity because by looking at my front cover and my title you cannot state that this is a student magazine. Some students have a stereotypical opinion about student magazines, which they are boring, colourless, and only teachers are interested what is inside of it. I decided to destroy this prejudice. My magazine was created strictly for students, it talks about their interests, it doesn’t talk only about school and school life, I looked outside the box in order to find what people of my age might be interested in.
  Therefore my front cover looks nothing like the front covers of most of the student magazines and I have decided to go against conventions, I wanted to try if that would make students read school magazines more often.
  
  

• • How does your media product represent particular social groups?
  
  My target audience are the people of my age, teenagers 15-18 years old. As this magazine would be published in our college I considered student’s background as well. People who go to our school are interested in culture and art, therefore I considered their interested and made my front cover and contents page very creative. I took a picture of a head of boy’s boarding, Ivan Wu because he is the head of boys society in boarding and he plays an important role in our school. Also the fact that he is a student will also attract the target audience because everyone knows him and people would be interested to read an article about him. I have used a colloquial language because it suits my target audience. I tried to create attention-grabbing cover-lines that would attract my audience and reflect their interests. I created a positive and creative presentation of teenagers, because students from our school like being extraordinary and different from others, however my presentation of a head of boy’s boarding was non-stereotypical because he doesn’t look formal.
  
  

• What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
  My original plan was to create a magazine that would be distributed in our college, however, after creating it, I realised it could also be transformed into a general teenage magazine, because my magazine doesn’t only talk about our school, it talks about different things e.g. music, art, holidays, health, etc. My magazine is likely to be distributed because it ‘looks outside the box’, it develops the readers as it talks about things that some people usually wont be interested in, however, after they read the magazine they are able to learn something new for themselves. The magazine ‘INSIDE’ could be distributed in our college because I think it suits the target audience. It could be distributed within the original college magazine ‘COLLEGE LIFE’ because this magazine speaks strictly about college and its news. My magazine is very different to most of the school magazines I’ve recently looked at and I believe, that my magazine may bring something new into media. It would provide the ability for students to get a good interesting, ‘different’ magazine in school and read it at break times and discuss it with their friends.

• Who would be the audience for your media product?
  

My target audience are people at the age of 15-18, students of St. Edmund’s College. Most people who go to my school are brought up in high middle class, therefore their interests must be considered, our students like shopping, exhibitions, concerts, in other words – people like to go out and experience new things in life. I have undertook a questionnaire to find out what people are interested inand later on, after analysing the data, I’ve included topic people were most interested in.

How did you attract/address your audience?
I created an eye-catching front cover, with the head of boy’s boarding on it, I included interesting and attention-grabbing cover lines which should attract the audience. I also put the price of the magazine on the right top corner of the front cover and made it big size so people can see the price, and it is low therefore it should help me to attract more buyers of my magazine.
My front cover is very dark, however there is a high contrast of black and white,I believe it looks very stylish and therefore people would like to stop and have a look at it, it looks very different from ‘COLLEGE LIFE’.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have used different programs to create my final front cover and my contents page. First of all, I organised a photoshoot with the model(Ivan Wu) and I used my own camera, canon 550d. I did not use photoshop to edit the picture that was used for the front cover, I set my camera on black&white mode. I used scanner in order to scan the front covers of all the different school magazines I have looked at, because I wanted to use it as an example. Later on, I used the website dafont.com to create different designs of the title and then I used photoshop to put the picture and the title together, I then created cover lines in photoshop as well. To create my contents page I’ve used the publisher, its very easy to use. I then inserted all the pictures I needed for my collage and was able to move them around. I then had to create text boxes to put the cover lines in it. I also coloured the actual page in black and created a grey frame.
It didn’t cause me any troubles to use photoshop and publisher because I have used it before in my life.
I have used blogger.com already therefore it was not hard for me to set up my media blog there, I tried to create a good design and a layout so it would look attractive and be well-structured.