AS Media Studies: Preliminary Task

Research

College Magazine 1:

Mis-en-scene - The title of the college magazine is vibrant red, this gives college a positive impression becuase red is a very deep and bold colour. The girl on the front cover also has a top on of the same colour, this connects her to the college, she's smiling and looks happy in the photo which implies that she enjoys college.
The background is of trees and a field, which shows that college involves you to be really active and your not stuck inside all day. It also suggests that the girl in the picture is energetic. The background also tells an audience that the college helps students to keep healthy and fit.

The heading 'Smoking Salvia? The truth being this legal drug', informs students about smoking and may persuade some students that smoke to quit. It also tells the reader that the college helps students keep healthy. The heading 'He better hope they serve beer in hell' is referencing alcohol, which can relate to the students that would read the magazine. The magazine covers topics that would be interesting to students, otherwise the students wouldnt read it. Another heading 'She's 15 & pregnant' references sex, which would also relate to teenagers because the article is about a teenagers. The article would be useful in the magazine because it could stop other teenage girls from making the same mistake. Finally, the heading 'Avoid sleeping you way to the top' tells you that the college does everything to help their students achieve their goals and to stay determined to get the grades they want.

The barcode shows that the magazine is sold. It is used for sales purposes.

College Magazine 2:

Mis-en-scene: The masthead is extremely bold and clear and stands out to the audience. This means it’s the first thing your eyes get drawn to when you look at it. This is important because it promotes the magazine and it is clearly showing what the magazine is about. The title ‘College’ tells the reader that the magazine is about the college and also attracts the appropriate age group, which is their target audience.

Primary Audience: The primary audience would be girls and boys attending college, people may relate to the main image as being male focused but girls might like the look of the boy holding school books that make him look intelligent. The primary audience would also be upper class students because the boy in the subject of the magazine is carrying books about law, business and society. Which are good jobs that involve a lot of work and studying; this would suggest that they have been well educated throughout their lives and expect to have a high paid job when they leave education.

The main image: The image of the cover is mostly the background to the cover, this makes it look sophisticated, again being aimed at the primary audience which is college students. The necklace he has on refers to religion. This makes the audience think that he is innocent, which suggests that the magazine is aimed at people that are taking their college courses seriously and trying hard to achieve their goals. The image is behind the text at the sides but in front of the masthead, which is effective because it is telling us that the magazine is well known, that the title of the magazine is obvious that we don’t need to see two of the letters. The letter ‘L’ has been completely cut out, however we can still acknowledge that it is called ‘College’. The image is of a man that is attractive, which persuades a female audience to pick the magazine up, as well as, a male audience because he looks casual and ‘cool’, which could make boys inspire to be like him.

Contents Page

For this contents page they have used the title 'What's inside', this is different which makes the page interesting and something that most people haven't seen before. Therefore, people will want to read the contents page. which will tell them whats covered in the magazine and if they want to read the magazine they will.

They colour of the background is dark peach and they colour of the girls jacket in the main image is pink and black. These colours clash, which makes you think that they havent thought carefully about the colour scheme.

Also, the pictures they have put on the contents page are disconnected. The main image of the girl on her phone doesn't connect with the image of the night club because they are completely different places and have different meanings behind them.

Also, the font that is telling you what is which page is not clear because it is all squished together, which means the reader has trouble reading it. This is would put someone off reading more of the magazine because it's difficult to read and readers don't want that.

However, the layout of the contents page is good. This is because the main image is spaced good and it's not in front of any text and the title is different and unique. But the way they have done it, makes it a bad contents page.

Front Cover Planning

Colour Schemes:

These are images of different issues of vogue with different colour schemes. I looked at these for inspiration for my own magazine front cover.

I also used this to think of colours that would go together and to see if any colours I wanted to use clash or not.

Fonts:

I choose a few fonts that I liked the look of and typed the title in all of these fonts.

I then asked 10 people on which font they thought was the best one to use. In my results, I found that most people favourited the font 'Rockwell Extra Bold'.