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Looking back at my preliminary task to create the college magazine, I feel as if I have progressed a vast amount in order to make my final magazine look as if it could fit being within a professional magazine industry. As my college magazine was designed to practice using InDesign and Photoshop whilst on the Mac, I was more focused on trying to find out what I can do on these programs rather than trying to attempt to make my magazine appear like a real magazine.
I believe that my preliminary task wasn’t a bad first attempt as I hadn’t yet learnt about how to construct forms and conventions to make them appear professional. However, I have noticed that there are clear mistakes that I didn’t make doing my final magazine. Firstly, the image with my star persona doesn’t cover the whole of the front cover making it appear amateurish, as most magazines do following this convention. My cover lines feature several different fonts showing no real pattern which suggests that it is random making it unprofessional. Also, the cover lines use too many words instead of being short and catchy.
Doing my research, I have noticed that magazines only use very few different fonts to show pattern, this is something that I have taken into account doing my final magazine. I have also featured more forms and conventions which I didn't use in my preliminary task because I had not yet learnt about them such as pull quotes and extra diegetic gaze.
Research and learning about the forms and conventions within a magazine, improved my ability in attempting to create a magazine that appeared professional. My research also included using primary research to pitch to my fellow peers in order to come to a conclusion about which idea for a magazine I should do. Once I was able to figure out which idea I should go for, I then started doing my research into pop music magazines and fitness magazines to see how they use forms and conventions within their magazines. I noticed a trend in how they displayed their star persona with the extra diegetic gaze and where they placed their pull quotes and cover lines.
My peers also helped me to decide how I should create my magazine through a questionnaire. I believe this aided me a lot because they were within my target audience's age range.
I followed certain traditional convention within my magazine because of it's effectiveness in attracting their target audience. Attracting my target audience is something that I particularly needed to learn how to do. I found out that in order to make it look interesting, I had to experiment with the layout of the magazine to see which feature works best where. I also experimented with how I could display my cover lines, banner and masthead to attract the audience's attention. One of the things I experimented with was copying the colour of the one of the star person's clothing items and using it as a block colour behind a cover line. I feel that this was effective as it showed that I considered very carefully the colour scheme.
Conclusion In conclusion, I feel that I have learnt a lot about the forms and conventions within magazines and how to use them to my advantage. Another advantage in creating my magazine was to do lots of research into magazines in order to gain this understanding. Doing my research helped me to realise that careful precision into all details of the magazine is important.
