Media Preliminary Magazine Coursework
- Analyse 3 different magazine covers and list themes that run through out.
- Annotate an example of a magazine cover.
- Readership profile
My target audience is ages at teenagers between the ages of 16-18, and will be focused at the stresses of sixth form, as my questionnaire showed that lots of people would be interested in the sort of pressures and difficulties in sixth form. it would also be good for up coming students. The women that I asked often were more interested in fashion and gossip, but the men were more into sport and comics. The students that I asked all didn't have a disposable income, but the adults that I asked did have a disposable income. This means my magazine will have to be very appealing, and not cost too much money. In my questionnaire I asked about the preferred colour scheme, and red and grey was the most popular. So that it is not overly colourless, I will as other colours such as green, to try and bring the photos to life. The font that was most popular was Aharoni, as it was bold and easy to read.
- Design a name and slogan, that is relevant to your magazine cover.
The first thing I will do is look up other words that are related to Relax and Calm, as my magazine will be about the stresses of sixth form, and what you can to to combat them.
Ideas for Name:
- Unwind
- Recline- sounds too lazy
- Cool off- sounds like it is your fault for being stressed
- Breather- sounds refreshing and like you are outside
- Time out- sounds like you are allowed to slack off
- Chill- Could be see as a bit aggressive
- Burden- Sounds relatable to many students.
Ideas for slogan:
- Get away- sounds like you are running away, as a pose to facing your problems
- Reach out- Implies help from other people
- Lessen the load- too cliche
- Stress less- play on words, shows exactly what the magazine is about.
I think my name "Burden" with the slogan "Stress less" is good because it clearly explains what my magazine is about. Burden is a very strong name that draws people in, and "stress less" is a play on words, but also a good piece of advice. I will have "Burden" in capital letters, so that it catches your eye, and is a stronger statement. I will also have "stress less" in capitals, but I will make the font slightly smaller that the masthead, so that people can differentiate between the masthead and slogan. My house style will be an easy to read font through out, with a colour scheme that will be one of the following: either greens, reds, lighter colours such as yellow, or plainer colours such as black/ white.
- Plan photography
My cover will show the stressful side of sixth form, as well as the calmer side. To do this, I will take photos of a classroom environment, and of a woodland area, to show calmness and spaciousness. I plan on blending the photos together, to demonstrate the 2 different sides of emotions. I will take lots of photos to try and get the best angles and views, so that I can edit them to look the best possible. I want to edit my photos to look like my focus point (the student) could be in either if the two environments. To do this, other than taking lots of pictures, I will line up my centre point on both the photos directly in the middle, so that I can have a better chance of lining up the photos. i think this appeals to my identified target audience because it shows the real environment of their classrooms, whilst also showing a more open scene of woodland, which is where they would much rather be.
- Do a front cover mock up
I have done two mock ups of possible ideas for my background. This is so that I can have an idea of what sort of photos I will eventually take. I have focused on the background as a pose to the foreground because I have a good idea of what I want to do, but I am unsure about colour schemes and other magazine aspects.
- Woodland environment:
This mock up is good because it shows which colours work well with the different greens and browns in the photo. I have done very little editing to the picture, other than to add a blur onto the outline of the photo. This is because it make the photo softer on the eyes. I don't think I would use this feature on my actual design because I want by focus to be on the foreground, but the blur focuses you on the distance.
- Indoors environment:
This mock up was just so that I could get to see what kind of things I would need to do one a plainer photo, which has less going on in the background. I really like the black and white, because it gives off the impression of less emotion/ unhappiness, which lots of people who read my magazine might be feeling.
- Mock up colour schemes:
I tried using yellow as the main colour in my two mock ups, but after finishing them, I think that yellow is too harsh on the eyes and is slightly off putting. A good thing about yellow is that on the indoors picture it stands out very well, but parts of the title and subheading on the outdoor photo are harder to make out. I also think that the font in the woodland photo is not easy to read, so I will change it to something more obvious in my real cover.
- Magazine features and articles
I will include the different interviews and quotes from different celebrities/ teachers. They will be in capitals to make them more impressive and urgent. i will have quotes from teachers and celebrities, because teachers will directly affect the students, and because celebrities are people that we would all like to be like. I will keep the cover lines a simular colour to the title, but not the same. this is so that all the writing is along the same colour scheme, but a different colour so that it doesn't get confused with the title. I will have to make sure that my colour choices don't blend in too much with the background, as I know that it might be difficult to make out my writing against a "busy" background (such as a woodland area).
- My Magazine cover:
- Evaluation
Positives:
- I like my editing of the split image. I think it looks professional, whilst showing off my idea of being in two places at once. i really challenged my self to make the split image look decent, but also to make the foreground look like it's almost 3D, but editing the cover like "stress less" to sit behind my student's head.
- I like the red colour scheme, as it is very obvious to read, but is also very soothing on the eyes. The red title stands out very clearly, whilst the orange supplements it nicely, without being too garish.
- I like my photography, because it is very clear as to where they are, as well as which one is a better place to be. My
- The title is very bold and bright and easy to read. This will help it stand out on the shop's shelves, and draw more people in. I trailed lots of different fonts, to try and work out which one was best for my magazine. Next time I would go straight back to my target audience to try and work out which one was best, but unfortunately I ran out of time.
To work on:
- I think my woodland area with classroom area is too crowded, and hard to make out what is going on. It took me a long time to get the cover lines to be clearly visible, as they kept blending in with the writing. I think I managed to solve the issue, and I am quite happy with the result.
- I ran out of time towards the end of each section of this assignment. I had limited time to try and take the photos, and I think I could have worked harder in lesson, which gave me too much to do at home. I also had a big issue with editing facilities. Unfortunately I didn't have suitable software at home, so I had to do it all in school. This meant I couldn't take a particularly long time looking over my cover, as I could not work on it in the free time I had at home.
Overall I am very happy with my cover, and I think it i done to a high, profession standard, with a few mistake from which I can learn from.
