1. Preliminary Task Evaluation.
I believe that the task went quite well as I am proud of my final products and believe that
they follow the codes and conventions of a college magazine. My FC (front cover)
included a skyline at the top of the magazine as you would expect with the sell words
‘the college magazine you want to read’ which I think a lot of teenagers can relate to.
I have also included a cover line to draw my readers in which is ‘snows over folks’ which
is in a bigger font than the rest of the the stories which a plugs. The font choice (Gill
Sans MT) was decided upon because it is clear and bold which is useful for capturing
the eye of the audience. I chose to use whites and blues for the main body of the font on
the FC because of the results that I had received from my questionnaire for the question
of ‘what colours do you associate with college?’. However for the exclusive article I
outlined the white font in red to make it really ‘pop’ out from the rest of the text on the
front cover. Buzz words such as ‘exclusive’ were found on both of the FC’s that I
analysed and they are a part of the codes and conventions of magazines in general, not
just college magazines. They make the FC look a lot more exciting to look and and
could potentially lead to the targeted demographic of college students to pick it up. I had
to mix about the colours a bit for the CP (contents page) as the central image (which is
also the anchorage for the student photography article) was difficult to put colours on
without the text hard to read.
A medium close-up image of a student has been used which was not only a requirement
for the task but also seen in one of the college magazines that I studied which shows
further use of following codes and conventions.
From this preliminary task I have learnt how to use programs such as Adobe InDesign
to create my FC and CP layouts and final productions. It did take a little getting used to
however I feel confident now that I could use this program effectively in the future. I also
learned a lot of magazine terminology which I am still getting used to and need to
continue to work on but I am getting the hang of it the more I use the words to
communicate which part of the magazine I am talking about.
If I were to do this again I would go about some things in a different manor. I would
produce a larger amount of questionnaires to include more students in my research to
produce more quantitative research. I would also introduce qualitative research so that I
can begin to understand the mindset of what do my readers want to know about so that
I would be able successfully sell the college magazine.