Evaluation of college magazine

I believe that my magazine uses certain elements of other media products and magazines as well as differing from other magazines that may have been produced. One of the ways in which my magazine is similar to others is that I used a medium close up of an individual on the cover, this is a convention that feature on a lot of front covers, the image was taken of a student at the college and I had to consider the lighting and focus in order to get a good image.

 As well as that my college magazine also followed certain features associated with a magazine such as the masthead at the top of the page and also covers lines making it more recognisable as a magazine through the conventions present. Other elements of the front cover also created similarities to other magazines for instance the barcode on the front cover is something that features on the cover of all magazines as well as issue information and date. The contents page also follows some elements that feature in the majority of music magazines for instance the title as well as smaller images throughout the page, the images on the contents page give some information into what is going to be featured within the magazine. The contents page that I produce also follows the conventions of other magazines by being structured in a column with numbers to keep the page and magazine organised.

 Having said that there are also certain elements that don’t fit in with the usual conventions of a music magazine the over and contents of my page are less complex than other music magazines that are normally produced and my contents page has been divided in a effective but unusual shape that may not feature in a lot of magazines.

 I used a variety of media technologies to create my magazine, one of the first media technologies that I used was the photography that I did using a digital this was then uploaded on to the computer and I imported the images into Photoshop.

The magazine was created using Adobe Photoshop and I used the range of tools and features available in order to create the magazine. One example of this is that I wanted to get rid of the back grounds on my images that I had taken so that I could blend the image into the background of the cover. I used one of the editing tools on Photoshop to delete the background on these images and ended up with a more professional looking image that merged into the background.

 I believe that the strengths of my magazine is that it incorporates the conventions that are important for a college magazine, it includes the house colours that link with the college and also the masthead is effective and fits the purpose of the magazine. Having a solid fill background I believe is also a strength as it makes it look more consistent rather than too much design or variation.

The weaknesses of my magazine however would be that it doesn’t look as professional as other magazine and that the design needs improving for example I think that more smaller images could have been included on the cover image as well as more presentable coverlines in a more stand out font. As well as this I believe that the contents page also needed improving, for examples the lack of colours makes the page look less appealing and also the column structure could have been formatted a bit more adventurously in order to make for a more professional looking finish.