Evaluation Of My School Magazine

The audience for my school magazine was A, B, C1, C2, D and E. I think that I have catered for the audience. The primary audience was the students of the school and the secondary audience of the school is the parents and all of the stake holders in the school. I think that I have catered for the audience as I have included images of the school pupils and all of the pages in the school magazine are related directly to the pupils but the other audiences of the school magazine will be able to enjoy them as well.

The masthead of the school magazine is bold and is coloured in red, orange and yellow. The connotation of this is that it is a bold masthead that stands out from the background. The denotation of the masthead is that it is bold. This means that the school is bold and that students are not afraid to stand out form the crowd and that they are not afraid to be bold. The colour of the masthead could imply that the students are fired up about school and that the school is hot on expectations and what they expect the students to achieve.  This also refers to the title of High Expectations.  However I feel that the font on the mast head could have been a little better as the font may be hard for some people to read. Next time I will use a more defined font so that more of the primary and secondary audience will be able to read the font properly.

I have had to take out all of the backgrounds form the images that I had decided to use in the magazine. I took the images in a busy environment and decided to cut them out of the background to make them stand out more easily. I think that the magazine would have looked a little more realistic and better if I had taken some of the images in a less busy background and kept some of the backgrounds. I feel that the audience may have been able to connect with the pupils that are on the front cover as they will know the surroundings on the front cover. It also may have been a bit more exciting if the front cover and the contents page had had a real background.

I think that the semiotics of the front of my school magazine is positive. The girl at the bottom of the page is looking up and the denotation of the picture is that she is gazing in to the future. This could imply that the school are giving her the options that she needs to do well; also she could be looking up to the title of the magazine. This could suggest that she is happy with the high expectations of the school. The bigger picture of another girl smiling could suggest that she is very happy with the school and that she is keen and eager to work and do well. This is good as demonstrates that the schools pupils like that the school has high expectations. However to make this image better, I could have smartened up their uniforms slightly. This would have meant that they are demonstrating the high standards of the school but from the images they look a little bit scruffy.   

I have had to make a few decisions in the making of my front cover and contents page. I decided that on my contents page that I would not have images of the pupils. I did this as I wanted the pages to stand out and not the pupils that surrounding the pages of the magazine. However, if I did the magazine again then I would have images of the school surrounding the page as the crayons looked a little bit babyish.  Little images would make the magazine look more professional and exciting to the audience. I have taken the purple out of the colour scheme as I thought it was to girlish to be put on a unisex magazine.  Over all I think that the magazine was a success, it met the target audience however, with the improvements it would be even better than before.