Evaluation: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

In completing this project, I've had to use both photomanipulation and publishing programmes, in this case Adobe Photoshop and QuarkExpress for the front cover and contents page respectively.
I used Photoshop in creating my front cover. Using its painting and editing capabilities I was able to easily cut the model from the original background of the photo and edit it using the magic wand and paint tools, manipulate the different elements seperately using the "layers" function, create borders for my smaller images and insert shapes, before rotating them in the way I wanted. Being such a versatile programme, there was little to nothing which caused me a problem, and I was able to achieve everything I wanted to with it.
However, I found that it was very difficult to get the results I wanted on QuarkExpress. Although it offered the shapes and word processing that Photoshop did, I found it was not able to cope with detailed images and reduced their quality significantly, making both my font and pictures seem pixellated and fuzzy. As it didn't have a magic wand tool, its parallel capabilities of making areas transparent was much poorer, leaving a white outline behind which made layering the image on top of a coloured background look messy and unprofessional. Also, as it provided me with no seperate layers to work on, after a while of placing images and text in the work space I found that they were more and more difficult to select as they overlapped each other.

Evaluation: How did you attract/address your audience?

The targeted audience for StudentBeat would want to buy the magazine for both aesthetic and literary reasons.
The bold colours, accompanied by the unusual, stylized font would be striking to the eye and pleasing to look at. The brightness of the colour and scruffy font connotes to life and fun, as well as the teen image and embodies some of what the magazine is about. Furthermore, the model is of the same age as the targeted audience, and is smiling and looking straight at the camera and thus the reader, giving an air of familiarity which would make the magazine more approachable. The model is dressed informally and listening to an iPod, increasing the sense of familiarity and also referring to the musical slant of the magazine.
The name "StudentBeat" sums up the genre of the magazine and will immediately attract readers for this specific, "student" encompassing the student community, and "beat" connoting to music, and so the main topic of the magazine. Also, I've used the personal pronouns "you" and "your" to target the audience further, making them feel included and used colloquial language to reinforce the informal tone of the magazine.

Evaluation: Who would be the audience for your media product?

StudentBeat is targeted, psychographically speaking, at student aspirers and achievers, as it contains articles on revision and exam aid, helping a student get the best possible out of their courses, and offers an insight into the careers of those in the industry, referring the student to the universities offering the best music course choices in the country. It would appeal to individualists for its promotion of less mainstream music, but only between the ages of about 16-19, the age of a college student. The magazine is not intended to target one gender, but rather encompass both, to allow wider opportunities for all students.

Evalutation: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The magazine I have designed uses many of the conventions of a regular magazine. It has a unique logo, stylized and memorable, and is accompanied by a strapline to boost its importance. The articles are advertised in a column down the side of the main image and, as in most magazines, the model fills the page and is both relevant to the genre of the magazine, uses eye contact and smiles. There is a clear use of screamers both to advertise articles and other contents and there is a clear colour theme which is identifiable to the magazine. There is even the use of freebies. Inside, on the contents page, the colour theme is continual, and there are featured articles advertised with large images on one side, whilst the other is again dominated by text advertising the articles the magazine has to offer.
However, even through all of this, I feel there are subtle differences between this and a simple music magazine. In fact, StudentBeat is more like a teen life magazine with a musical slant, which promotes not just bands, but a student's own opportunities in life, aiding revision and exams, to finally getting auditions and jobs within the music industry. Thus, instead of being a simple recreational read, it is also a tool of learning reference and careers information.

Front Cover and Contents Page: Published

Contents Page

Researching further into magazines, I also looked into the design and layout of contents pages. Doing so, I noticed that all contents pages have certain shared traits. For instance, the pages are usually split in half, one side occupied with images and the other with aligned text advertising the articles the magazine supplies. The articles are usually in larger fonts than their subheadings below, and are explanations of the titles, and the photos themselves are generally dominated by one large picture, of the most importance, then smaller, lesser images. Each are made appealing by their generally simplistic use of colour and font size, as well as their varied image size. The house styles are clear to see, each page containing the same colour and font scheme as the front cover, as well as containing articles the same genre as advertised on the cover. Bearing this in mind, I feel I will be able to create a contents page inkeeping with these ideas.