Research- College magazine front covers

Key Concepts

In the premliminary task I looked at ways in which media key concepts could be applied in helping with the production of the college magazine. I used the acronym LIIAR - Language, Institution, Ideology, Audience and Representation to help me do this.

Language:
Text- The text on the front cover should be relevant to the images and the contents of the inside pages of the magazine.
Font- The font should be appropriate to the rest of the magazine, this includes the colour, style and boldness of the writing. It is important to keep the magazine fun and attractive to attract the audience which would be 16-19year old students therefore the font must be bright and adventurous.

Institution:
The institution of this magazine would be the college, the students would write this magazine aimed at other students. I think this is a good idea as they would know what to include in the magazine and what other students (their peers) would benefit from reading about.

Ideology:
Ideology is a set of beliefs and values, what the magazine believes in or what message they want to get across to the reader. In this case Wyke is all about furthering your education so i will include information on education and student life.


Audience:
The audience of this magazine would be students both male and female between the ages of 16 and 19 generally with the odd exception. Because my college would be a magazine written for and by Wyke Sixth Form College students it would be Wyke students the magazine is aimed at as the contents of the magazine would not be relevant to any other individual who did not attend this college.

Representations:
The main image on the front cover of the magazine should represent an event for example of something relating positively to the college, which would also be followed by the main article.

Conventions of a magazine contents page

Aswell as analysing a college magazine contents page i also thought it might be a good idea to have a look at two fashion magazine contents pages to see if there were any similarities or major differences.

The left handside image has 5 images included whereas the other image only has one, after looking at the college magazine contents pages the left handside magazine is how i would usually expect the page to be laid out and look with various images related to articles that have the page numbers the articles they are advertising are placed whereas the second image has no images that advertise any of the featured articles.

Both of the contents pages have the required elements of contents pages; the page numbers, the articles and article brief analysis. Both contents pages also have the featured articles subheading and the regualr article subheadings.

Conventions of a college magazine contents page

In order to research into other college magazines i have decided to evaluate and analyse the conventions of a college magazine contents page.

There is a welcome note which is used as an introduction wrote by the editor giving an insight into a few of the main articles inside the magazine, this is a good idea as it gives our warmth to the reader and makes them feel more involved.

There are three images of top stories/headlines as it is these what attract the readers and therefore should feature heavily on the contents page so that it is easy for the audience to find.

Short analysis of page headings: The page headings need a short summary of what the title is all about as sometimes they maybe misleading or the editor may want to include more information about the article to ensure the audience are more likely to read the article.

Contact information is placed on the contents page as this is the most relevant place, the contact information is needed so that the audience can submit their input and give feedback back to the magazine.

Regulars & Special features sub-headings: The two seperate sub-headings are important to determine what the audience could expect in every issue of the magazine and what is a one off article.

Page numbers: It is extremely important for a contents page to have page numbers alongside the page analysis giving the magazine extreme organisation and helping the reader to quickly find the page they are looking for.

Recycled paper logos: I think these magazines have included the recycled logos as education institutes are big promoters of recycling and how to make the world a better place, these logos help with there promotion to make the world a better place, one example of this being recycling paper.

Names of colleagues contributions to the magazine and what they contributed: These magazines as well as most of the other magazines i researched into have included this, i think this is because the person who worked on the article therefore can gain full recognition and any audience feedback good or bad can be directed back to this person.

Conventions of a celebrity/fashion magazine front cover

I have chosen to evaluate and anaylise the connotations of a popular celebrity/ fashion magazine front cover to help distinguish the similarities and differences between it and the college magazine. This will also help me with ideas when making my college magazine front cover.

The Masthead is the name of the brand the magazine is from and used to distinguish the brand from another. The magazine shown is a weekly magazine and although usually magazine masheads are exactly the same on each issue this magazine's varies week by week by changing the colour scheme however the position and placement of the text on the page aswell as the font style and size stay exactly the same each issue.

Magazines will usually include on the front page the date the issuse was published for which week commencing, the issue, the price and a tag line usually just above or below the Masthead (as shown in the image). This is to inform the audience of the information they need and to compete with other leading magazines by sometimes showing how much cheaper the magazine is compared to it's rivals.

Magazines usually have a main image which is the main headline and attraction of the magazine, in this case and in most celebrity magazines which can afford it the main picture would be a famous celebrity who is perhaps high in the media interest in that moment in time the magazine is being published, this is done so that the magazine grabs the audiences attention more than a rival magazine. This magazine has lots of colourful images on the front cover which are used also to attract the audience, the background to the bottom left hand side plug is the same colour as the masthead aswell as other focuses on the magazine which are this colour.

There are various plugs on the front of this magazine like the college magazine They also show bits of information which can be found inside the magazine. A well known example of this is to use quotes which the celebrity may have used in the exclusive interview that follows after the photoshoot but they twist the words spoken around and use them in a different context which helps draw the audience in by leaving the quote asking rhetorical questions. There are many other plugs used on the front of this magazine including two celebrity plugs one with the caption including the word "stalker" and another about how to shape up using the tips and advice from lusted and envied famous popstars "The Saturdays". There is also a plug advertising cheap dresses at gorgeous looks which is a very appealing article to the target audience at this time in crisis with the credit crunch. The last main plug is a "real life article"on how to win your ex back, the way the caption is worded makes the audience believe that if they read this article than they are guaranteed to win them back, misleading but also appealing the audience. At the top of the masthead there is an advertisement plug to win a trip to New York this is aswell a massive attraction to the audience, because of the massive prize it entails.

The main difference of connotations between this magazine and the college one is this magazine is much more chaotic and jam packed with colours, images and writing whereas on the college magazine the colours where kept to a minimum as where the images and there was not alot of writing. The white background of the magazine was also able to be seen unlike this magazine where there isn't a blank spot, every inch of the magazine front cover has something going on.

Conventions of a college magazine front cover

These are both examples of college magazine front covers, I will be analysing them and pointing out good ideas which i can then use on my magazine:

-The date: It is important to include the date on a magazine college front cover as it shows the date it was published therefore telling the audience whether it has any relevance to the current time period.

-The masthead: The Masthead is a fade between green to blue giving the impression it is for a more sophisticated person, it is really relevant to the target audience of secondary students as people say the biggest changes happen in your school years, the fade of the colours may represent the changes in a person during them years. Because the colours are not too drastically different it gives me the impression that the change in the people are not too drastic either just small changes to get the students ready for events later in life.
It is important to show the title as this is how the audience recognise the product, as although everything else usually changes on the magazine front cover, the title always stays the same.

-An image: The first image on the left shows a girl who is dressed in a uniform which makes it quite clear she is a school student, she looks as though she is in a lesson and listening to somebody else's ideas perhaps which is a key point in learning, it is important to listen; to the teacher and your peers. It is important for this magazine to have an image on the front cover which shows some relevance of the information inside of the college magazine. Beside the image is a caption written in pink font which is the stereotypical colour anything to do with girls should be wrote in. The caption says "Do boy's and girl's learn differently?" as t is wrote in pink font and the image is of a girl this could give the impression that girls learn by listening to others for example.
The second image is of two boys, also in uniforms showing they are school students. There is also a caption which goes with this image "Playing to learn". Straight away jusst from looking at the image alone you can see it has something to do about football and school subjects. However i would not use this idea as i would like to attract both a male and a female audience unlike this magazine which i would expect would only attract males and the odd female who was interested in football. The idea i did like about this magazine however was the use of students from different ethnicity's, i would like my college magazine to follow the values of Wyke College which is the college my magazine will be for, one of their values is the acceptance of people from different ethnic backgrounds.

-Plugs: At the top of both of the magazine front covers are three plugs. One of them on each of the magazines is asking a question, this technique is used to tryy and attract and lure the reader into reading the contents of the magazine. In the second magazine front cover the question has an image beside it which also helps to attract the reader. The other two plugs on both of the front pages of the college magazines give an indication like an image of what is included in the contents on the magazine. There is also a further plug on the top college magazine underneath the caption of the main image saying " PLUS Free student cookbooks see page 5", the word "PLUS" is in bold and is in the same font colour ans the masthead drawing attention to it by making it very noticeable. In both of the college magazine front covers the 3 top plugs are in different brightness of shades of pinks, this doesn't work very well for the selling of the top magazine as the image is of a girl and if girly colours are used, male students may not think it has any relevance to them so may not want to read it, whereas in the second front cover where it is all about football and the people in the picture are boys, it brings the opposite sex into the magazine more by using the girly colours, showing it is attracting both sexes.

The Brief

Preliminary exercise:Using DTP (desktop publishing) and an image manipulation program (photoshop), produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Additionally you must produce a mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of DTP.

Main task:The front page, contents page and double page spread of a new music magazine. All images and text used must be original, produced by you- minimum of four images.

Presentation of your work:The presentaion of the research, planning and evaluation may take the form of any one, or combination of two or more, of the following.
- A presentation using slideshow software such as powerpoint.
- A blog
- A podcast;