MY MAGAZINECOVER

My media product has similar connotations to real student magazines. The connotations that I wanted to communicate to my audience were: youthful, energetic, lively, fashionable, fun, informal, playful, casual.

The layout of my magazine front cover has a medium close-up picture for the background with the masthead in the top left, the coverline's are around the main focus of the picture used for the background.

This layout is typical of some real student magazines because it attracts the reader and looks comfortable - I avoided putting any text over the main focus of the picture or too close to the facial features because it would make it look uncomfortable.

The masthead of my product was in black and white and in Arial font. I made it black and white to prevent connoting a gender reference, therefore making it suitable for both genders, and had it in Arial so that it was clear to read.

To successfully reach my audience I defined them in the same way as the producers of real magazines do. I looked at Psychographics, which groups people by how much the achieve and what the aim for in life. These are: Succeeders, Aspirers, Carers, Achievers, Radicals, Traditionalists, and Underachievers. Out of these I thought my readers were Aspirers, this means that they want to climb up the social ladder. I thought this because my audience is students/teenagers and a lot of teenagers and students care more about socializing than anything else.I also looked at social value groups. These groups are Traditionalists, Materialists, Hedonists, Post-materialists and Post-modernists. I identified my audience as Hedonists which are people who like to enjoy life now rather than later. I thought this because many teenager's and students like to 'live for today'.Some magazines define their readers really specifically by writing a profile that refers to what they consume, what they eat, what they enjoy doing, what they would like to buy, etc.

I attracted my target audience by communicating the connotations I wanted the magazine to give. For the front cover I used a picture of a 17 year old girl, this is because I am aiming the magazine at students so to attract them I used someone of roughly the same age as the audience.I used black and white colours for the text to make the magazine seem youthful and informal. For the masthead and the coverlines I used a sans serif font to make the magazine informal and casual. I made the text have a slight, white glow around the outside, this was so it could be clearly read because it would prevent the colour of the text from blending in with the colours of the background, it also made it more playful and fun.

Through constructing this product I have learnt how to use Photoshop and InDesign.On Photoshop I learnt how to use different layers for different elements of the magazine so that they can be layered up and moved about to create different effects on each object. I also learnt how to used the Clone stamp which allows me to paint a clone of an image, this if useful to copy part of an image to somewhere else. In the background, in the top left corner of my picture was a blue post that distracted from the masthead, instead of moving the masthead to somewhere else I used the clone stamp tool to clone the wall in the background over the post, making the masthead clearer to see. I also used the clone stamp tool to delete moles and imperfections that the person in the picture had by cloning her skin, this made her skin look naturally clear and smooth. Before constructing my magazine I experimented with Photoshop so I could discover different tools for me to use. I learnt how to use the Magnetic Lasso Tool, this tool allows me to easily outline an object in an image so I can copy it or cut it and then paste it onto another image.When using InDesign for my front cover I learnt how to use different tools that allow me to insert pictures and text. I found out that when using different fonts and lines in the text it is best to use a different text box so that it can be moved about separately.