I chose these two images that I had taken to place on my contents page to help advertise different things that are in my magazine, this helps to make it more interesting for the audience and letting them quickly see what my magazine is going to consist of. Having a variety of different images with different people makes it look better and more professional.
The first image I chose to show a little preview of students photography and the second image I chose to show students working and getting along with eachother or maybe helping eachother and giving advice.

I chose this image for my front cover for my college magazine because I shot it in a particular way to provide room at the top of the image and room at the side for the text down the side, also I like the fact my student is looking down as it's different to the rest as they usually have eye-contact. I have a mid-shot image using books as a prop to make it more interesting and eye-catching.

college magazine analysis

There is a middle shot of a student looking person who is positioned into the centre of the page, and he is giving the audience eye-contact, this automatically grabs your attention because he is looking straight at you. The props that are used help you to be able to tell he is a student as he is holding books and is quite stylish and dresses how a young teenage/college boy nowadays would dress. By having props and holding the books this makes the viewer automatically presume he is a student and the title being “college lifestyle” infers straight away that it is in fact a college magazine. Props really help in images as they help to make the story of the image complete, in this image it helps you to know he is a college student, which may make other college students able to relate.
The title is a bold print in yellow; this automatically captures your eye as it is against a black background, by doing this it may make you want to read or buy the magazine more.
The font used varies from being bold and yellow to thin and white, by doing this is adds more variety to the cover and helps to make it more interesting. The wording used helps you to be able to understand that it is aimed at a teenage audience “make money on campus” or “why we love Blackberry” they are advertising the pages that will make the audience think “I want to read that” The way they describe things as “hip” or “hot” is getting down to the slang of the teenagers and being informal; speaking how they would speak.
Also the way this front cover interacts with technology I think would really capture the audience because you always see teenagers these days spending time on their phones or on the internet so this magazine including a website to visit is a really good idea.

col2
Originally uploaded by bethanymelissa

To read my second college magazine cover analysis done via Flickr, click on the image.

questionnaire analysis

I designed a questionnaire about a college magazine. My first question I asked “should there be a college magazine?” by asking this I found out that 80% of the people surveyed said yes they would buy it. From this I also established that there is a market out there for a college magazine.
Next I discovered that 90% of the people surveyed said that they probably wouldn’t buy the magazine, so from this I decided that advertising would need to be done to promote it, I then analysed the audience age group and interests and decided the places the advertising would need to take place is in fashion shops or sport shops, taxi firms or maybe in fast food places as this is where teenagers would most recognise the advertising. On the contents page there needs to be spare pages for advertising also.
The next interesting thing I discovered was the fact that 60% would pay something for the product, so maybe if the price was kept at a cheap price and introduced the first issue free, this way it would help promote the magazine and people can get a free taster so if they like it they will buy it again.
90% of the people I surveyed decided they would like the magazine fortnightly so I would bring it out in between then.
I then established that the audience want a gossip page, college information, course information, events guide and a jobs section, so this helps to be able to construct my contents page already.
The way ive found I can encourage an audience to buy the magazine is by using bright colours, important news, make it relevant to our area, and have it eye-catching, so this has helped me with ideas to be able to construct my front cover.
I also discovered that 80% said no they wouldn’t subscribe to the magazine, so I need to find a way to persuade the audience to want to subscribe. I could make the first issue free and then sell it at the cheap price of 50p after, once a month, and if you subscribe you get 50% off what it would originally cost you.
On the front cover I will have pictures of students as my questionnaire shows that 65% of the people I asked want this.