1) The student magazine was titled "The Student" to clearly target students as the audience. 2) The front cover features an idealized image of a happy female student to portray education positively and draw consumers in. 3) For the magazine to be successful, the cover needs to portray a social group in a positive light and contain distinctive design elements like the masthead and fonts.

1. Evaluation <br />Preliminary Task<br />After researching several media associated magazines, I found that using the name “The Student” fitted the concept of my magazine best. “The student” has a clear target audience because of the image of the young girl on the front cover, who is of similar age to the readers and because of the issues discussed.<br /> For my masthead I used a bold blue typeface, to portray a calmer aspect of student life. It is a binary opposition, because student life really can be stressful at times. The typeface of this magazine plays a part in creating the overall sleek look that I wanted. The serif is unique, and easily recognisable, and therefore makes it a unique brand. I used the “Century” font to make the magazine look premium in value and quality to other magazines.<br /> In my opinion, I think that “The Student” follows the overall conventions of the student magazine genre, because all magazines have a specific masthead and cell lines which can be easily recognized in the marketplace, such as Vogue or Q magazine. If I could do it differently, I would make the masthead even more distinctive, and use a different font to make it more animated. I would use specialist software to do so.<br /> I spent a lot of time choosing the image for my front cover. I decided upon the picture of a middle/upper class female student in a shallow focus shot. She is in a pretty college courtyard, in front of a classroom door. It is an idealistic image, because it seems perfect, and the sun is shining. The girl portrays happiness at being educated, and is therefore reaching her full potential in life. She is glamorized, especially with her well groomed blonde hair and clothing. She follows the “body perfect” image that most young people aspire to have today. The eye line shot of the woman gives off the connotation that she is almost looking at the reader, and she would therefore look at shoppers as they walk past the stores shelves. I believe the image is vital at drawing consumers in.<br />The main image used represents the social group of young female students and does so in a positive light. The image does not follow the stereotypical representations in which the media portray teenagers, as the girl is getting educated, and creating “The Student” magazine could also show that we do care about our studies and futures.<br /> Furthermore, the cell lines I used for my front cover add to the overall glossy look of the magazine. The text used is bold and also white against a darker background. The word “success” is in italics, to emphasise the positive effects of reading this magazine, because students want success and the best possible results. I also used ticks instead of standard bullet points to emphasize this.<br />The blue question mark featured is another way of gaining the audiences attention. It is enigmatic and audiences will question as to why it is there, and will then look to the text besides it, and read what the magazines about. I used a number of fonts to also gain more attention. The picture of the woman screaming with books on her head also makes my cover comical in some ways, and therefore memorable.<br />I believe institutions such as WHSmith’s would sell my magazine. “The Student” is similar to the broad range of media texts that they sell, as well as the fact that the stationary category in my magazine would endorse the pens that the large store sells. I also believe that the Haymarket media group would be a key media company to distribute my magazine, and would also provide help to fund it, because they have the financial scope to advertise my product in a broad scale marketing campaign, due to the fact that they have invested in cross media convergence and synergy of companies.<br />My contents page followed on from the theme of my front cover, and I used bright and colourful pictures in order to give off the connotation of happiness and success. I included colourful fonts as well as spaces between each category in order to make it easier and clearer for the reader, and even included the fact that the magazine will have an advice page.<br />To summarize, I have learnt that in order for a media magazine to be successful, it needs to contain certain characteristics. The masthead needs to be bold, and the general magazine cover needs to portray a positive overall image of a social group, from young students to women or it won’t be bought. If I could create the same magazine again from the beginning, I wouldn’t follow magazine conventions, and would make it different so that it would stand out from the crowd, and be profitable. However, I hope that students will buy my product if it is ever put into production. <br />By Jack Highfield<br />