School Magazine- EVALUATION

      

       I feel that overall I am pleased with the outcome of my magazine. I am particularly impressed with the masthead; the writing is in capital letters and black font so it stands out from the vibrant background colour I have. The typography also has the effect of it being smudged, which ties in with the school theme of the magazine.

In comparison to other magazines I have looked at, my feature article photograph is a lot smaller than the professional magazines. Although my magazine does not show all of the person similarly like the professional magazines, it does not fill the whole of the front page; this means that there is a lot of negative space. Some of this negative space however is filled with plugs and puffs such as “EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW”. I decided to use puffs to boost the magazine and make it look competent and eye catching, the same way as they do on a professional magazine. Therefore some of the negative space was used up but there is still a considerable amount left, this is one of the things I would improve if I was to re-do the task.  Following on from this, although I was pleased with the connotation behind my masthead, I feel that compared to the other magazines I have looked at it is not big enough. Because of the fact that the masthead and photograph are not big enough, this means that there is a lot of space between these magazine conventions. When looking at the other magazines they did not have this problem and again means that there is negative space.

Although the vibrant red background of the magazine makes the black text stand out, many of the professional magazines tend to keep their background plain and just use white or neutral colours. I decided to use a red background to make it eye catching and it fits in with the school colours used at our school. However to improve it, I could use a lighter coloured red or change the background to white and have red text so it keeps with the school colours but also looks professional.

On the contents page I decided to carry on the red theme, as well as having a bold title like the masthead on the front cover. I was pleased with the relaxed tone the page conveyed as it was quite plain but included everything a magazine should have, without it looking overcrowded. I was particularly pleased with the list of what the magazine featured, as it had an extra sentence briefly explaining about that article, just like many other professional magazines do. However the subheading of the magazine is hard to read, so next time I would change the font to improve it.

My magazine is mostly aimed at year seven students and other students who are new to the school. I think that this is clear from the front cover as the feature article photograph is a picture of a young boy; his uniform also looks smart so he represents the school in a positive way. I feel that it is also clear to see that it is aimed at the younger years due to the mode of address. I didn’t use any complex words and I used alliteration “Who Will Win?” to communicate with the reader in a chatty form. My magazine is not aimed specifically at a particular gender; because of this I used colours that can be both female and male, so that my magazine would not be sexist. I also have a picture of both a girl (on the contents page) and boy (on the front page) to further emphasize that the magazine is not sexist. The demographic of my magazine all in all represents a cheerful looking student and is aimed mainly for pupils in younger years.

I have attracted the audience (young students) of my magazine by  the feature article photograph, from this it clear to see that it is for the younger years and makes the magazine look welcoming and friendly as the boy is smiling and looks buoyant. Another way in which I have attracted the audience is by the chatty, colloquial plugs, this shows that the magazine is not serious and tedious, which will attract more students knowing that it looks entertaining.

Before I started this task I had no experience with using Photoshop; however I slowly got used to the layout and different tools that the application has to offer. Over all I found the application easy to navigate around and use the tools to the best of my ability to construct my magazine. I learnt how to cut around a photo using the magnetic lasso tool, this saved me a lot of time and meant that the pictures looked neater rather than trying to use a rubber to cut out the photo. I also found out how to edit the text to make it look effective, I used this for my masthead to give the effect of ink being smudged.

All in all I was generally pleased with how my magazine turned out, however there are some improvements that I need to take into consideration to make it look more professional.