Magazine Evaluation for Preliminary Task

The magazine I have created is for students at the University of Oxford. My intentions were for it to be an everyday magazine or paper that students could pick up from a chosen point in their campuses. It is less formal and not as particular in the layout as I wanted to create something that students may actually be inclined to pick up and read.

As it was for students at a university, I gave the magazine a more contemporary look; making the images look more like photographs with framing and giving the magazine an overall, more casual feel. I decided to do this as I thought that students may be encouraged to read it. The images I have used are not my own as this is just a practice run enabling me to learn how magazines are constructed. Students could possibly relate to the stories written in the magazine more if it wasn’t as formally presented as a newspaper. This challenges forms of real media products as for example, the Oxford magazine is presented in an extremely formal way with a very bland layout including just short headlines and subheadings on the front cover. This is done to appeal to their particular audience, and even though my magazine design does not follow conventions of real media products, it would appeal to my target audience.

Even though I have challenged the form of real media products, I have also used original forms such as the large masthead at the top of the page, where I have just used the University of Oxford logo and the main headline which in my case is “Student Protests: Will They Change Anything?”. I have done this as it would attract the reader and they would know immediately what the main story inside would be. This would be a reason for reading the magazine if they are interested in the headline.

My media product is focused entirely on the student protests and riots in London over university fees rising. I felt that this was appropriate as it was a university magazine and it would appeal to the students. They would want to find out about the actual events and how and why the fees are rising. The magazine I have created focuses on the student protests at the University of Oxford and how the people had come onto the site. This presents the social group of students in both a good and bad way as they are putting forward their ideas as to why they think the fees shouldn’t rise but they are also trespassing and causing havoc amongst the other groups and community.

As I mentioned earlier, the target audience for my magazine are students who attend the University of Oxford. It would be designed, created and printed by members of the student union at the university therefore; I don’t think it would be appropriate to say that a media institution would distribute my product. I think that it would be better for the actual students to create the magazine product as they would know how to attract their audience and what to include in the magazine that the students would want to read about. From my design, I have attracted my audience by making the headlining story about student protests at their own university. This would appeal to the audience as they can all, in some way, relate to it.

From the process of constructing this product, I have learnt ways in which I can include headlines and images on the front cover and design it effectively which would enable me to attract the target audience. I have learnt what I need to include in order to make the product appeal to anyone who wishes to read it. I have also thought about my target audience and what they would like to read which has broadened my knowledge of the media product itself and how much thought goes into making it.