Evaluation of School Magazine

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For the school magazine I tried to follow as many of the codes and conventions of magazines as I could. I used a font for the title that was unique and I kept all of the coverlines in the same font and colour. I had the price, date and issue number on the cover. The colour scheme was consistent through out with only 3 colours used. On the contents page I used all the same font and had a picture of the cover. I had columns for the text and the page numbers were a different colour to the rest of the text to make them stand out. I think I have conformed with the codes and conventions rather than challenging them, although I could have followed them much more closely.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction of your media product?

For the front cover I used Adobe Photoshop, I was quite confident about using Photoshop because I had used it before to make magazine covers at GCSE. I used QuarkXpress for the contents page. I found this very difficult because was new to me and there were alot of elements that I did not understand.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of both the product and your use of new media technologies?

Firstly the front cover was strong because it had and appropriate title and coverlines and the colour scheme was simple. It had the barcode and the issue number and price. I could have improved it by getting a better picture for my cover image. Also by having larger brighter coverlines that could be read from a distance. The Title needed to take up more space and the positioning statement needed to be under the title. Secondly the contents page needed to have better images on it and the text should have fitted on the page better. The contents page was consistent with the front cover and it had the magazine website details. Photoshop was relatively easy to use and I would be confident using it again. However QuarkXpress was very difficult and I think I need more practice with it so I can familiarise myself with how it works.