CCN Magazine Self EvaluationJACK HUNTRIDGE DIXON

How does your magazine represent particular social groups?

For the student magazine, my target audience was students doing AS level qualifications, between the ages of 16 and 18. In an effort to defy convention, I have tried to represent my target audience as hard working and enthusiastic about their studies.

I think that students may find it refreshing to be represented in this way because they are often represented in media as the polar opposite.

I have shown a photograph of a member of my target audience on the front cover, this will immediately let readers know that the magazine is targeted at them and that is will contain content relevant to them and that they will find interesting.

I have tried to give the most positive representation of teenagers as I can, while keeping it realistic and believable.

For instance I have included lots of articles about how to improve on your college work but also articles about things like daily expenses and employment; both common concerns of college students.

I have tried to tone down the hedonistic representation of teenagers by showing them as more planned and focused than most often are.

I have made an effort to use the dialect of my target audience by including some slang terms, colloquialisms and figurative speech, however I have not included any language that would be difficult to understand by an elderly person.

I wrote the text in such a way as to make the magazine not look threatening, which could have happened had I used lots of teenage slang – this may have put potential readers off of buying the magazine.

On the cover picture, I have tried to use lots of technical codes to convey a positive image of my target audience, such as the image being taken at eye level to the student.

Also, I decided to have the student sitting outside to challenge the convention that teenagers don’t go outside.

In the image, the student is studying instead of drinking or taking other drugs in the pursuit for short term pleasure.

This connotes that the student is mature for his age and is taking his life seriously, again, another convention challenged.

I have tried to give this magazine pro-teenager ideology to contrast mainstream media.

At first glance, it is noticeable that the student on the front cover is not using a direct gaze (direct mode of address), instead he is concentrating on his studies.

I have done this intentionally to represent the student as passionate about his work.

Also, he is not slouching over and his body language is quite open, using this body language connotes that he is friendly and open.

Aside from my target audience, I have given little representation of many other social groups, I have done this because the egocentricity of my target audience will cause them to have greater interest on content they can relate to, instead of a magazine for adults, which has little to no relevant content.

What aspects of your work are you pleased with and why? I am pleased with the general aesthetic of the front cover and

how most of the text is formatted. I also like the “CCN Map Inside” puff, along with its map marker

graphic. I have given the front cover an enigmatic tagline to entice

readers and to convince them that they need to buy the magazine to read the article.

For this project I studied existing magazine covers and contents pages, and I think as a result of this my finished product is more satisfactory.

During the peer review exercise, I received several compliments on the formatting and layout of the magazine, which I am pleased with.

I am also pleased with my generally positive representation of people in my target audience, I think members of that audience will find the magazine more interesting and more enjoyable to read as a result of this.

What aspects of your work do you feel you could have done better on and why?

I feel that the main coverline on the front page could have looked better, this is because I think that the blue colours clash unceremoniously with the greys and reds of the background.

This is another problems that could have been solved in Photoshop, given more time.

I also feel that my contents page is a little rough around the edges. Both of these problems could have been solved pre-release with some quick changes in Photoshop, however I ran out of time because of the deadline on the contents page.

I received some criticism for having an image of the cover on the contents page, however I did take inspiration from this from a real magazine.

For the images on my contents page, I went out on several occasions to take new pictures, as none of the images from my previous photoshoot were suitable.

Unfortunately, on each day that I went out to get pictures the weather was overcast so image of the college façade looked lacklustre, at the end of the project I decided to use them anyways.