Preliminary Evaluation

Preliminary Evaluation

Bentley states that the creative process is; ‘the making of the new through the rearranging of the old” (Bentley, 1997). I applied this to my production through looking at existing magazines to find out the common conventions of magazines before I started planning my own cover and contents page. Firstly, I looked at the Bodmin College magazine, and observed that it was not fit for purpose as it followed very few of the common conventions of magazines, did not appeal to the target audience and the writing was very difficult to read because of the colours used for the font and the background. Because of this, I challenged and broke existing conventions while making my magazine and attempted to make it resemble magazine styles that my audience said they liked when asked in my Survey Monkey. My target audience most liked the style of Fashion magazine, so I followed some conventions like one main image, bright colours and using teasers on my cover to represent the needs of my target audience. However, I did break some conventions as my magazine was from a different genre and I wanted to be original. I broke conventions through having no price, issue date and bar code.

My magazine represents the social group of youth. Dick Hebdige (1998) termed ‘youth as fun’ and ‘youth as troublemaker’. One story on my magazine was ‘Bodmin College student gets into Oxford’. This disrupts Hebdige’s theory as it is showing youth neither as fun or troublemaker and is instead showing them as hard working.

I asked a question in my Survey Monkey to see which topics my target audience would like to read in the magazine. I posted this survey to Facebook so my primary target audience would see it and answer it, meaning my results would be from my target audience. I then made sure that my magazine contained the topics that my target audience wanted to see. I also asked a question to see which of some existing magazine front covers most appealed to my target audience, and then tried to make my magazine in the style of the magazine that proved most popular.

I have learned a lot about using Blogger and Survey Monkey from doing this task. I had never used either of them before so I found out a lot about them. I have also learned a little bit more on Photoshop. I had used Photoshop a lot before but this task helped to sharpen my skills on Photoshop.

I think that my magazine follows the conventions on the two college magazine covers that I analysed. It contains a masthead, a main image and some teasers.

On my main task, I will try to include more common conventions of magazines, such as a barcode, a price, and an issue date. I will also try to make my music magazine more appealing with a more interesting font and a better range of colours.