Magazine coursework Part 3

03/04/2019:

Due to a fault in my planning, I had to scrap the original idea and utilise plan B, which is to create a photography magazine, which means that I had to retake my cover photo and come up with new ideas in order to create this magazine.
This is an unforeseen issue and (at the time or writing this) I am trying to amend the issue as soon as possible.

Codes & Conventions:

Masthead-In large bold print with eye grabbing colours to get attention, picture of a camera with identification along with page reference to help readers get more information about  the available product.

Coverlines-Have small bits of info about what is contained inside of the magazine, the bold stand out colours help to define it from the background and helps to make the text more stand out.

Slogan-There is no discernible slogan on the front cover of the magazine however that does not mean that this particular company.

Price and Barcode-The price $5.99 helps us to determine that this type of magazine is of a higher quality than some others, the location of the barcode also helps us to determine the location of the pricing and the date that the magazine was published.

Cover Model-Objectified in a stereotypical way of how women are sexualised in the media, with the exposed legs and seductive pose in order to attract the typical male gaze in order to get men to buy the magazine, the similar objectification is shown in her face with indirect eye contact which shows that the viewer is the alpha also the makeup making her face appear ideal and attractive makes the male gaze more apparent.

The purpose of this magazine is to inform people about photography elements as well as helpful hints on how to make their photos better, it’s also designed to appeal to those who do photography as either a hobby or profession as they’ll be the target audience for this particular magazine but it can appeal to anyone. The demographic for this particular magazine are people who are either amateur photographers or for those who are just getting into it, and are looking for little tips and tricks from the articles in this magazine in order to help them improve it. However this is the targeted demographic, it can be targeted at people who like to look at and examine photographs that look good that have been taken by these in order to get inspiration or just for the pleasure of viewing the works.

The content that is usually contained in these kinds of magazines is usually informative, as it gives you the history of the photographs (like when they were taken, and what they are) and further in it’s giving tutorials almost, about how they can use photoshop in order to fix their images and make them look more appealing like those that are seen in the actual magazine itself.

In this double page spread we can see that there’s a lot of information around the three main images for the article, one of the bold subtitles is “Find a Background focus point” which means that this entire section of the article is based off giving hints and tips to amateur and hobby photographers to make sure that not only their works are good but that from these that they can have a sense of pride in the work that they have done.

This factor combined with the subtitle headings at the top of each page reinforce the point that the purpose of this magazine is to inform people about photography as well as offer good photos for people to look at whilst they read about how it was made. This means that this particular double page spread is designed to teach as we can observe by the subtitle headings to each paragraph.

There’s a small section in black which gives the reader advice on how to use the advice that the magazine has given and what to use in order to achieve this as well as offering some sample photos for the reader to see what to do and what to use in order to achieve this.

The spread layout of the  photographs on the double page spread helps to break up the images and for a better examination for examples of what the magazine can demonstrate and for them to be able to better connect what has been discussed inside the magazine in order for the audience to have a better experience with the magazine.

Evaluation of my magazine

 I  feel that the arrangement of the coverlines is good although the text on them has been stretched which has caused some disfigurement to them.

I’ll need to fix the text and colouring as well in order to make it more legible for readers.

The underneath of the main title still has a bit of difficulty to read against the colour of the bridge.

The transparency of the Canon camera’s background works well in order to not ruin the main cover image of the magazine.

The main cover image works as an attention grabbing image in order to sell copies, although it could have more of a model focus as typical of these magazines.

The front cover also needs the price, barcode and date on it as well in order to make it a better looking magazine and make it an official type as well.

With my double page spread the main image works well as a background although for a photography magazine there’s usually smaller images dotted around  the pages in order to provide a visual representation of what’s being discussed.

The second thing is the text, whilst there’s a good amount of it, there’s a certain amount of illegibility with the text on the right due to the choice in colouring for the text.

Also there’s a distinct lack in the page numbers, meaning that it’ll be difficult to navigate the magazine or for just trying to figure out where you are in the magazine.

Another missing element to the magazine and as is typical of these kinds of magazines, there’s usually some kind of faint title at the tops of the pages which would make it easier to identify where you are in the magazine.

The title for this section could be more bold and pronounced rather than how it’s currently, also the opacity could be changed to make it appear as though it is in thee sky rather than having it just as an in your face kind of style in the background.

The target audience of my photography magazine is amateur photographers aged 20 to 35, there is no specific gender to my magazine, the reason why I chose this age range is because this is the period of time where these people will be looking for a career or hobby and my magazine is designed to show this age grouping what photography is like as a career path. The purpose of my magazine is to educate people on what photography is like and how the audience can improve their images in order to get the most out of it. The genre of this magazine is lifestyle.

The double page spread was not appealing for the type of magazine I was aiming for, there is just a plain background with block text, this would not be satisfying to a reader because of the dull layout and lack of examples to the relevance of the article. I then began to re-make its structure by shrinking the background image to fit the left hand side of the page in order to be able to have more images of the style talked about in the article.

I also began to move the text and change its style in order to better suite what I had aimed for.

This change in structure also helped me to better style the magazine in a better format to make it more eye catching and more visually pleasing for the reader.

After re-working and bringing all the parts together here’s the end result of my second attempt and I am much more pleased with the result, it has clear division lines for the pint where the pages are joined together as well as clear and separated photos in order to maximise viewing pleasure.

The page numbers along with the magazine name help to make this magazine more identifiable compared to other competitors. The multiple photos help for the viewers to differentiate between the topics discussed.