Evaluation of My Preliminary Work

The name of my preliminary school/college magazine is ‘Education Weekly’. I chose this name because I think it communicates the genre and regularity of magazine easily and it is a name the target audience of students and young adults aged 15+ and parents would find memorable. I chose a colour scheme of grey, blue and white with a slight transparent appearance as I think that it is professional-looking and doesn’t contrast with the images I used and it isn’t too formal for students.

For my main image I chose a photo that I took of a friend in an art classroom, as I think it shows the audience that it is aimed at students, although the fact that she isn’t in uniform shows that it is aimed at older students rather than younger years. Over the top of the image is the caption “The best rated schools in the UK – chosen by you!”. This implies to the audience that the magazine is more interactive than a magazine that’s strictly about official school news, and it may make them interested to know what other people of similar ages and situations think.

I also featured four other article names on the cover to further attract my target audience, including the headline “Exclusive: Interview with Headmaster of best UK academy”. This suggests to the reader that they won’t find this interview anywhere else and may influence them to buy the magazine.

Above the barcode is the price of the magazine, which I chose to be £1.59. I chose this price because I think it appeals to students in the target audience as it’s a reasonable price and they wouldn’t have much money so wouldn’t want to pay more than this for a magazine. At the top of the page, below the masthead, I have included the date and issue number to show potential buyers how recent it is.

I think my front cover could be improved by possibly a less formal font for the masthead, and also by improving the general layout and adding additional graphics on the sides to make it look like there is more content in the magazine. I also think that the two images below the main image could have been improved by editing them on Photoshop to make them brighter, or by replacing them with photos of teachers with students to give the impression of it being more of an interactive magazine and more related to students.

For my contents page, which I tried to keep consistent with my front cover in regards to its font and colour schemes, although I did use a font that wasn’t used on the front cover for article descriptions and page numbers as because it looks as if it’s written in chalk, it connotes a school theme.

I divided the article descriptions by putting them under sub-headings with the page numbers still in chronological order. The sub-headings are ‘on the cover’, ‘main stories’ and ‘guides’. This will make it easier for the audience to find articles as they won’t have to go through the whole list to find what they’re looking for.

The images I used all relate to the different articles and act as teasers to draw the audience in, (this is shown by the page numbers I put on top of each one), and make them more interested. I tried to make sure that the photos didn’t contrast with each other too much and make the page hard to read.

I think my contents page could be improved by making the font smaller on the list of articles, as I would have been able to either add more articles or some additional images or banners, although this may have crowded the page too much. Apart from this, overall I think the contents page and cover went quite well and I will attempt to keep the same consistency and conventions in my final outcome of a music magazine.