Week 25: Important Aspects of a Brief and Skills Profile Completed, Research into Existing Products Started

We have now been given our brief for our third assignment and the assignment is to create a Student Magazine Front Cover, A Double Page Spread with a Story and a Contents Page for the Magazine.

I have completed my report on the important aspects of a brief, this included what I learnt about the different types of briefs, including, briefs such as  Contractual, Formal and Informal, through this exercise I have also learnt how to correctly read a brief, as this will help me when I come to responding to my own brief which I have been given. I have also explained the advantages and disadvantages of the different types of brief and this gave me an insight into what could be some problems with the different briefs and what the advantages are when working to a certain brief. I have also completed my Skills Profile for this assignment, within this skills profile I have stated my skills and knowledge within the areas which I will be gaining more skills in throughout this project, I also stated the targets which I would like to achieve by the end of this project and stated how I believe I can achieve them, I have also posted my Skills Profile on this Blog.

Research into Existing Products
I have also started my research into existing products, existing Student Magazines, by carrying out this research I am able to gain an insight an idea of what features are included within the magazine, as these are the types of stories which the target audience will be interested in and want to read about within their college and university magazine. This magazine also needs to have an appeal towards the audience of Parents, therefore a way in which I believe the magazine will appeal to the audience of parents is by including stories about the college/university as they are interested with the stories surrounding education and the audience of students will also like to read stories about their college/university. I also looked at the colour scheme and layout of the magazines as this is important, as this helps draws the audience into the magazine, for example if it had a catchy title and colour scheme people will be interested in reading the magazine. Other aspects which I need to research into which will be included within my proposal is the title, the target audience, resources, legal and ethical considerations and health and safety aspects.


Existing Student Magazines

 I have created my Production Schedule for this project and this states the order in which I will be completing tasks and the tasks which I need to start completing are the Contingency Plan, Mood Board and Research Into Final Product. I am also carrying out some Primary Research in the form of a Questionnaire, this will be aimed at my target audience and within the questionnaire I am asking the audience what they want to see within a Student Magazine and I am also asking their opinion on the name for my Student Magazine. I will also start to consider the the layout for my magazine and from the questionnaire I will have a clear idea of what the target audience want within a Student Magazine and I can then start to plan my Magazine Front Cover, Double Page Spread with a Story and a Contents Page.