FINAL EVALUATIONJennifer Webster

KEY ELEMENTS OF A STUDENT MAGAZINE

• A student magazine must appeal to anyounger but mature audience that arecurrently attending school. Therefore thecover should display someone that wouldbe associated with education yet comesacross as a stylish and someone theaudience would aspire to be similar to.

• The articles and content should bedirectly relevant to students, thereforethe headlines can vary from education tofree-time activities that are suitable forstudents.

FRONT COVER

The front cover should include:

o A masthead with the magazine’s name.

o A model, which appeals to the target market.

o The Price of the magazine.

o What issue it is.

o A brief sentence summary of what’s expected within the magazine.

o Headlines to draw in the target market’s curiosity.

o What’s exclusive to just that magazine.

o A website address, so the customers can easily refer to the website

My Student Magazine Cover A professional Student Magazine cover

CONTENTS PAGE• The typical contents page has

at least one photo that is relevant to the content of the magazine.

• The contents pages follows the colour scheme set by the cover.

• They show every article that’s in the magazine for the reader to jump to the page of interest.

MY MAGAZINE

Masthead

Models

representing the

target market in a

positive fashion

Website

address

Price

Sentence long magazine summary Issue

number

Exclusive information,

unique to this magazine

Headlines are

in the colour

scheme

Incorporated conventions in

my magazine cover.

Colour

Scheme:

Red

MY MAGAZINEIncorporated

conventions in my magazine contents

page.

Magazine name, in the same fashion as the cover

Headers to separate the

contents

articles

Page

numbers

Article titles

Website

link

Page title

Model

relevant to

magazine

Advertorial in that it shows a

successful student with these books.

WHAT I’VE DONE DIFFERENTLY

• I made the cover less cluttered with headlines, thereforethe few that are on there all actually get read.

• I used two models on the front cover instead of one. Bothof which are of different ethnicities, which broadens it’sappeal In the target market.

• I’ve gone for a red scheme rather than gold or green, asI think red is more representative of school andeducation.

• I made the column on the contents page with all thepage references wider so that it takes up half the page, Ialso made it more interesting by giving it a gradientcolour.

• On the contents page, the model is positionedcompositionally so that she ‘leans’ against the column,interacting with the page and giving it a consistent flow.She also ‘borders’ the column and gives it a nicebalance of positive and negative space.

• I’ve also included the magazine’s website on thecontents page again as well as the magazine cover, togive it a better continuity.

REPRESENTATION

As the magazine is aimed at teenagers aroundmy age, I chose to use models that are in thesame age group, because it’s a studentmagazine the models are wearing smart uniform.They are stereotypical of students, yet show themto be nice, friendly and happy looking.

The representation of the students is in a positivelight, therefore appealing to the targetaudience.

I’ve used ordinary language, not too formal butnot too casual, to keep people interested. Themagazine is pretty image heavy, and writing iskept to a minimum to stop the pages fromgetting too cluttered.

DISTRIBUTION As a student magazine, the content is limited to people in education. Therefore places it would be likely to sold are places such as schools and shops selling other school products.

As the content isn’t limited to just one school, it broadens the places and the audience in which it can be sold.

Currently our school does already publish a school magazine but is aimed at all learning age groups. There is also a magazine aimed at the parents of students. My magazine differs in that it is aimed at a more mature student audience, namely sixth form.

There are currently many magazines on the market about university and general education, however the number of magazines aimed at Sixth form are rare, therefore there is a gap in the market in which my magazine can take.

TARGET AUDIENCE

My magazine is aimed at students from around the age of 16-18 and for both genders. However female models were easier to work with for a magazine.

ATTRACTING THE AUDIENCE

• 70% of people buy magazines on the spur of the moment, therefore the magazine must be visually attractive to invite someone to purchase it. For that reason I made the image on the cover the main part.

• The magazine ‘talks’ to the audience because the models I used are every day people like the people that buy the magazine, they are wearing smart uniform and look successful, therefor implementing that the purchase of the magazine can lead you to become like them.

• There are also exclusive articles which cannot be found in any other magazine, therefore increasing the likely hood of choosing this magazine over others.

• There is also a chance to win £1000, meaning people may buy it, in chance that the magazine will pay for itself and more.

TECHNOLOGIES USED

During this project I used:

• Photoshop

• Camera

• Blogger

• PowerPoint

• Publisher

• Slideshare

• Survey Monkey

I’ve used Photoshop before, therefore it was fairly easy to use, however I learnt new techniques and easier methods of photo manipulation.

I haven’t done much photography before therefore it was a new experience learning what makes a good compositional image and what lighting is best.

I’ve never used blogger before but I found that it was very user-friendly and found no troubles in using it.

I have a lot of experience with PowerPoint, therefore I found it very easy to use.

I’m less familiar with publisher but found that it works in very similar way to other Microsoft products and therefore was much easier to learn.

I used Survey Monkey to conduct my questionnaire, it was fairly simple but I still aren’t very confident in the full functions it is capable of.

I used slideshare to post this PowerPoint on my blog, I found it pretty straightforward and no skill was required.