Preliminary Task - Evaluation

Evaluation 

The aims of my coursework were to create summer and winter magazine covers, and one double-page spreadsheet in teen magazine genre. Therefore the target audience is young people aged 16-24. I chose this particular genre because, while doing my research, I found it much easier to analyze and understand teen genre magazines as I am that age. Therefore I thought for me to achieve a better result in this task, it would be great to try and produce a magazine in this genre.

While researching, I looked at similar types of magazines analyzed technical, verbal and symbolic codes in them. That helped me to look at the magazine genre more detailed and spot thing that I didn't pay attention to before, and also that gave me more ideas for my own teen genre magazine production.

I incorporated teen genre conventions by, for example, using the hashtag on one of my headlines of the summer magazine cover. I also used teen models for my magazine photos to create a feeling of trust in the audience, as the models are the same age as the target audience. Another teen genre convention that I included in both of my magazine covers is the use of celebrity names such as Dua Lipa and Ella Mai. They both are Londoners and popular singers that the target audience admires. Exclusive interviews with them are definitely going to draw the attention of their fans and make them buy the magazine. The fact that the singers are from the capital really support my magazine's title choice as it is ‘Teen Capital’ and I was trying to keep it very London focused. I also used shape stickers on my summer magazine cover, as I saw that teen magazine covers normally are very colourful, interesting and creatively designed. I thought that adding the star shape in a pink colour (that matches the background) would be a great way of meeting teen genre conventions.

I also borrowed an idea of putting a simple plus shape on the magazine while adding headlines on a cover from TEEN VOGUE. I used it for my winter issue and that immediately created a feeling of a magazine and gave it a different look. Furthermore, in my double page spread, I used a lot of photos and less text considering my target audience and also understanding that teen magazines are not that detailed and full of texts, but they have a lot of images in them. I also added social media details for Instagram, Facebook, and the magazine website keeping in mind that young people are active social media users and would like to connect that way as well.

I chose not to add any extra photos on the top of the main magazine cover ones, although that would have been a great teen genre convention, but that was not done only because of my personal design taste. If I had more time to spend on my production of the magazine covers, I would definitely try and put some more elements and picture on top of the main ones, to make them look more interesting, more colourful and also to communicate the genre of the magazines more clearly to the audience.

As my target audience is young people and in general the pieces of the design are for the public, I had to consider the issue of regulations. I made sure I am using appropriate language and photographs.

While creating these magazine covers and double-page spreadsheet I learned to look and analyze actual magazines in more detail. I was inspired by many teen genre magazines and they gave me a lot of new ideas for how to create my own magazine. I learned how to use different editing programs and websites such as Photoshop, Publisher, and Dafont.com.

I think, that my final production pages are very successful as they include many teen genre conventions. They all are well designed and look like a real magazine cover and double-page spreadsheet. I am very proud of the fact that in my winter magazine at the background of the cover photo you can see ‘The Gherkin’ building which is a very popular London skyscraper and again it links to my title of the magazine ‘Teen Capital’. I also chose a topic of my double page spreadsheet to be ‘Things to Do in London’ to continue the theme of the capital city. All photos are original and taken in London that also is a very strong achievement in my production.

However, as I mentioned before I do think that I could improve my magazine covers by adding more elements, images and fonts to them, to create more teen genre like magazine. Also, I think I could improve my double age spread by adding more information and experimenting with image placements and title size and frame.