Amy’s Feedback: Colour schemes

The reason why we as group had to consider a colour scheme was because within the brief the client SSFC asked use to produce an effective colour scheme as we would be making a student magazine on their behalf. So in order to establish which theme would be best for their magazine we as a group had to do initial research into the background of the client and of an already established student magazine to establish what they the client wanted and what the student magazine themes are like on the market now in order incorporate an effective and professional theme within our magazine.

When asking our target audience within the questionnaire we complied we found out what colour scheme they liked through a variety of choices such as whether they wanted a vibrant colour scheme or not. We were not able to get the feedback from our focus group on this topic because it wasn’t detailed or effective as we weren’t visually or verbally able to communicate our concept to our focus group so when making our questionnaire we had to make sure we were more clear when presenting our ideas to our target audience.

What we found out from our questionnaire was that a few students thought that a vibrant colour scheme would look attractive and bright whereas some student didn’t as they thought it would be tacky. So in the end we as a group decided that we will choose two bold colours as the main theme for our articles in the magazine to create continuity and house style so that our magazine will look professional and attractive. We decided that we would continue the college colour scheme of the colour green within the magazine title inbox to both establish this as the Solihull Sixth Form College magazine for its students whilst also the colour green has a deeper meaning as it will establish this a Christmas magazine as we would be making a Christmas edition of the student magazine. We chose this as our theme for the front cover and magazine issue to be a Christmas theme as we found out when we asked our target audience a large amount of people said they would be attracted to it because Christmas is coming. Therefore we wanted to make this edition a Christmas one for our December monthly edition. However there was a minority of students who thought that a Christmas theme would be irrelevant to them as it wouldn’t cover the important issues regarding the students today .So we as a group then had a decision to make on how we would combat this

issue so we decided that for our front cover theme we would try to balance both these two themes of Christmas and students education news. The reason for this was that these are important views within our students and we want to fully target our target audience needs while also try to meet the clients demands in producing an effective theme and magazine.

Parent zone Stories

Within the client brief the client clearly specified that they wanted stories to both have an significant and lasting impact on the audience through various stories covering the whole spectrum of college life. So we as group decided we should try and incorporate the parent zone the college offers on the website in more detail within the magazine because there is sparse information on the website and it is important to include important information to the parents as they play a huge role in the student’s life in achieving success. So we set out complying a questionnaire highlighting serious topics which could be potentially covered within the parent zone by getting the target audience i.e. students to highlight which would best interest their parents. We found out was that the main key stories that would interest the students’ parents would be how to help them through the examination process which is coming up in January and is an important topic that reflects the students opinions today as they want to achieve the best grade through allowing the parents an active role in helping them .Therefore we as a group decided this would be crucial to include along with university open days because these are details are important to the students today ,as they ranked this as a popular subject due to fact this is an important part of their education journey .By including this within our magazine we will be able to give reminders of important dates regarding open days so they don’t miss them as this was what students said they wanted included within the magazine. The meaning behind including this within our magazine this is that it will help the students in the next process in their life with their parent’s guidance regarding whether they decide to go to higher education or apprenticeships. However one of the ideas which we weren’t successful with was an idea I came up with which one of the articles would feature a story about the principal which would highlight what changes he has implemented within the college. This didn’t interest the audience because it wasn’t important or relevant as they the students stated within the

questionnaire so we disregarded this so that we wouldn’t include pointless stories which wouldn’t interest the audience and put off the audience of our magazine. As the purpose of including stories was to intrigue the audience not bore them. Another subject that will be discussed within the parent zone story section was the parents evening dates because the students believed this would be important information as the parents would want to know what is happening with their children regarding there subjects by coming in and talking to the subject teachers. This is a good point to cover for the parents and bad for the students. Finally other important decisions we as a group made was to include within our magazine was to show both UCAS and personal statements in order to reiterate to the students in year 12 the procedures that they have to follow when trying to apply for higher education whilst also targeting year13 telling them what happens after sending their application via UCAS and waiting for offers. By including this it will help and their parents and themselves put their minds to rest as this is a serious and nerve racking process dealing with UCAS and their personal statements.

We also asked our target audience whether they would like double page articles or singular stories being covered within the magazine because we wanted to know which layout the audience preferred so that we could implement this through our different stories I,e parent zone and college news etc. in the magazine. What we established is that some students preferred a double page spread which gave enough space so all the information could be covered with enough detail whereas some people liked singular stories .This was because they wanted different stories to be covered and not be thrown by large amount of information which wouldn’t interest them . So in end we as a group decided we would categorise the important stories i.e parent zone in double pages to allow full exposure of the subject which is what to our target audience wanted .Whereas ,we also decided that we would try to balance opinions being raised in our questionnaire by having singular articles featuring important subjects such as entertainment stories covering a whole range of subjects within the article.