Practice Task College Magazine- Final Piece

 

These are the finished copies of my college magazine for our practice task. I created these using inDesign and photoshop. The idea for the practice task was to create a magazine for college students as our target audience and to find out what they wanted for a magazine I did a questionnaire and included on the cover and in the contents page what students said they would like mostly to be included within a college magazine if they were the target audience. I did use the results of my questionniare when thinking f waht need to be included and i used my college reaearch moodboard on prezi to help me decide how I should design and how the cover and contents page layout should be.

 

For the main cover I have made shure that I have included all the necersarry conventions for a magazine cover. Such as a masthead to help the target audience recognise the magazine and know or learn that this magazine applies to them as students. I also used kickers and captions/cover lines to tell the target audience what is in the magazine and to give a little bit of information on what those features are, this helps the target audience find a feature they migh be interested in and encourage them to read the magazine. A secondary lead to give more of an idea of what is included and show different themes are included. I also used a flash and graphic feature to market a brand that part of the target audience might be interested in, this was to gain more interest for the target audience that may be brand loyal to this company. A selling line was used to let the target audience know that this is the colleges offical magazine, this is important as the targets audience will then know that this magazine is catered for them and they can read what they want inside. The central image/feature article photo is of a student purley because the target audience is stuents and they will recognise this as a college magazine if the feature article photo is of someone that looks like they are the right age to be a student. Also it may help get rid of the idea of what people have to look like, as on many magazines when a celebrity is used then that magazine target audience may try to live up to the impossible expectations of an edited celebrity image that used Richard Dyers theory, where as if it is just an ordinary face like any other students may feel they can relate to this magazine and what is included. there is also headline and anchorage to highlight the main article/feature in the magaizine, as this issue is meant to be a new college year issue i went for a story of how a new student felt about first starting college and the highs and lows they went through when settling in, this is could be used by students to relate and feel better if they felt the same way when starting college. Finally there are other conventions such as barcode, plugs and dateline with web address which helps the magazine look more official, proffesional and as if it is sellable.

 

For the contents page I wanted to try and create a helpful page for the target audience, that would help the magazine be more of and easy read and make the magaizne look organised. I did this by labeling page numbers to help the target audience easily find what they are looking for in the magazine by including the page numbers on the right hand side of the page and article/feature titles. I spilt the contents into sections and tried to make it as professional as I possibly could. I used my research from my questinnaire of what the target audience would want to be included in the magazine. I found they wanted to apply uses and gratifications, to use this magazine as a source for helping them with college work also as a source to help them relax when they need time away from their college work. That is why I split the contents page into a work and play sections, the work sections as articles and features to help students with college work, advise for careers and revision and a article about settling into college to go with the new college year issue theme. For the play section I included features and articles that are not based on college work, the articles are about what students are interestd in such as music film and the latest technology, these review tell students about the newest things in their favorite social subjects. I also added a section called Student Corner which is a section that is totally based on student life, this is to help make students feel as if they have a voice and somewhere to express their opinions. Finally I have an editorial section, which is where all the credits are given to those that helped produce the magazine.

 

Altogether I do beliveve that did use all the conventions needed for a magzine cover and did create a contents page that would keep the magazine organised and and be an easy read for the students. I tried to stick to my colour scheme throughout to help keep the college magazine looking professional and organised. Although the magazine may not exactly look a professional magazine that would sell in shops, I did use all the necerssary conventions and kept the target audience in mainf for what they wanted included to be a college magazine made percifically for them.