Final Product

Photos:

-In order to create my magazine front cover, I had to take photos of a model to be featured on the front of my magazine. I chose a student from my media class to do this. The reason I did this is because in a previous project, my model let me down last minute and so caused a lot of problems for me when creating my final design. For this reason, I chose a friend from my class during a media lesson to ensure that I got the photos I needed.

-I decided to take a range of photos, including different closeness of shots and different modes of address. However, keeping the same background - plain and simople. The reason iI have kept my background plain and white is because I do not want any attention drawn away from my main image.

- I have taken a lot of photos so that I have a lot of choice in which photo I want to use for my magazine front cover and can also pick which one would suit my idea best.

                 

Font Ideas

 For my magazine advert, I researched a numerous of different font ideas so I would have a range of fonts to choose from, ending up in my choosing a font I believed would be the best sutable for my magazine. I ussed the website http://www.dafont.com/ to do this. I want to translate to my audience the historical refrence that politics and history share and I aim to do this through my font.

 This font is called 'Organic Elements' and I really like this font. I think it is a quite sophisticated, smart and old fashioned way of writing, without coming across as to old, to hard to read or to boring. I really like the swirls on the 'T's as I think they give quite a nice touch to the writing.

This font is called 'Old London' and I think there are many good features about this font. I think it reallys stands out from other fonts because of the boldness. I also like the way that the writing is very British and very old fashion, two key features I really wanted to include in my magazines masthead's font because of the connections between that and the subject of politics. However, the only problem I have with this font is the 'W'. The reason for this is basically, just because it is very hard to understand and read what the word actually is because of the way the 'W' is written.

This font is called 'Justice by Dirt'. I really, really like this font as I find it very eye catching and interesting to look at. The reason for this I think is because of the different shawdows and shades created in different places created by sections of the letters themselves being 'coloured in' dark and creating the shadow effect. The way that the font is joined up aswell I feel gives off a sophisticated feel to the text. Also, the way that the first letters in each word has been created to include swirls and just look fancy in genral reminds me of old fashion story writing in which the first word of the story would be bold and stand on its own with a background of detailed art and detailed art within the first letter itself.

I have also had the idea of using the actual 'logo' for wyke as it were on my magazine front cover. What I mean by this is using the college's way of writing 'Wyke' instead of using a font for the actual name of the college. This would mean putting the image of the Wyke's actual name as an image next to a piece of text. This is a very rough idea of what I actually mean:



Political Research

-As I have decided to use politics on the front of my college's magazine cover, I obviously needed to research political stories in the recent public eye. When doing this, I needed to constantly keep thinking about my target audience. I needed to make sure that I didn't pick stories that would bored my target audience or only target an audience that too, took politics as a subject at college or are interested in politics.
-Whilst researching, I came across stories that my target audience could relate to;
- One of the stories I have chosen to include on my front cover is an uprising story about university tuition fees going up, making it a lot harder for students who have just finished college to go into a further education at university. I have decided to involve this in my college magazine's front cover as I believe that this is a very important political issue that involves not just students that are interested in politics, but a large range of college students as a lot of people wish to attend univeristy after attending college, however the price fee being raised could restrict and stop a lot of people doing this.

- Another story I have chosen to include on my magazine front cover is the child benefit cuts and the possible continuation of the child benefit cuts. This current political issue can effect people in my target audience because most of them will live at home with their parents, and if their benifits are effected, it can effect the student as well. The reason for this is because the amount of money coming into a household can change entierly, which means the way that the student live could possibly change as well as other people living in the house hold.

Magazine Front Cover Ideas;

-This image instantly grabbed my attention as soon as I saw it whilst looking for photos on google to inspire me on creating my own front cover for my Wyke College Magazine. I think its very interesting, really fun and different idea for each of the badges to represent a different issue. This gave me great insperation to use the same kind of idea on my own magazine front cover.
-Whilst thinking of other ideas for my magazine advert to put together in which to create my first rough sketch, I thought of the idea of dedicating my magazine front cover to a certain college sbuject, one that would link in with this image as I felt strongly about using this idea on my front cover however, changing it so it was then my own. It was the I thought of goverment and politics, a subject I personally have taken myself. Currently in the political news, there have been a lot of changes to the benefit system as well as university funds going up dramatically. These are issues that effect a lot of college students, even if they are not particularlly interested in politics. It was then I decided to involve politics on my front cover however, trying to make it so that it was not just targeted at people who have taken politics as a subject at college.
-To do this, I needed to make sure that I dont include to many political terms as people who have not taken the subject would not understand what they would mean.
-An idea I have also had is to have my model student on my photo that I am going to use to wear lots of blank badges and using photoshop, edit text onto each badge including a range of political issues, puting the main political issues that will stand out to my target audience in bold and making them bigger. Obviously, I wont be able to put lots of words on each badge, as the badges themselves wont be very big, however I could easily fix an problems I face with the sizes of the badges and text on photoshop.
- Due to the political genre of the front cover, I have decided to call my magazine 'The Talk at Wyke' as I think it fits in nicley with the context of the front cover relating to the political disscusions that would be included in my magazine.

- I found these badge templates on google which can be opened on photoshop and enlarged to a big enough image which can then have writing edited on top of them. Although it does not look like it when the image has been larged on here, these indervidual badge images can be enlarged on photoshop to the point where they are a.) big enough to have writing on them b.) big enough to stand out to anyone looking at the front cover c.) not pixilated.

Research

 Audience; This magazine seems to be very pacifically targeted at a female audience due to the image used on the front cover, the way the magazine is laid out and the type of features that are involved in the magazine which are shown on the front cover. I think this is a very bad idea as this narrows down not speicaifically the target audience, however it does narrow down the range of people who will actually want to buy and read the magazine. The target audience may well be towards a male and female audience, however because of the structure of the magazine, it seems as if the only people who would want to buy this magazine are teenage girls who enjoy reading and buying teenage gossip and true story magazines.

Ideology; I think the ideology of this magazine's front cover, is for college life at this certain college to look 'cool', something which most teeangers would be draw in by. However, in doing this, it hasn't made the college look very proffessional or as if it would be an educational college, high on the college listing created by the goverement which takes into consideration test results, etc. 

Due to the landscape in the background of the image; the fully leaved trees and the way the student is dressed, we get the subtle impression that it is summer time at this pascific college. This is then confirmed when the date issue and season has been included. Due to this, I would expect there to be something about this included in the features included on the front page, something along the lines of; a large heading with someone including breaking off for the summer or something summer realted, something to do with coursework deadlines due to the summer, or possibly advertising a summer college party. However, the magazine does not which makes me feel as if the creators of the magazine have put the image together well, thinking about the time of year and the season, however going on to no actually thinking clearly about the rest of magazine front cover such as magazine features and subheadings.

Representation; This magazine front cover is represented as a teenager girls magazine and not really a college magazine. Although I have already said, this magazine is really just represented to the female audience of a younger age.

I personally don't think this is a very good college magazine front cover as it is not represented at a female AND male audience. However, it does have magazine conventions; masthead, a main image, feature headings, barcode, etc.

 Audience; It is obvious that this magazine is targeted at a college aged audience, specifically a certain college because of the fact that their fresher's party has been advertised on the front of the cover. However, the name of the college has not been included and so, the only way that a person would know what college is being advertised is being a member of the college that the magazine is being sold at.

Something on the magazine advert that could possibly target a pacific group of people at the college this magazine is being sold at is advertisement for the college's freshers party.

Ideology; The ideology of the magazine is that it is trying to come across as a very proffessional magazine. However, I think in their attempts to do this, this has made the magazine come across as very boring and not particularly interesting. There is no theme within the magazine cover, nor any matching connetations. They could have easily have linked the date of the issue, in this case October, with the photo used on the front cover. For example, a student stood outside wearing winter type clothes, this would match the month as it is the becoming of winter. The magazine isn't very imaginative or creative and it does not stand out and make someone interested in the pacific college that this magazine has been created for. Infact, the college isn't really advertised on the magazine at all - this is a big mistake as it does not advertise the college at all an so does not stand out to the college it is being sold at nor anyone else.

Representation; The magazine doesn't seem to be targeted at anyone in particular and it seems to have been created to suit everyone.

The magazine can be seen to be targeted at both a male and female audience because no specific conventions have been used to single out a particular sex audience; e.g colours, features included in the magazine, etc.

The Brief;

The brief I have been set is to create a college magazine front cover for my college, Wyke 6th Form, as well as a mock up draft for it's content page.

                                         Included in the magazine front cover, as well as the mock up of the content page, must be my own ideas, self taken photos and ideas for features included in the magazine. For this brief I have been set a target audience of teenagers aged 16-19, the average age of a college student.