Evaluation - Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Before creating my magazine, I did a variety of research on other magazines in the indie/rock genre to get a better understanding of the typical conventions of media products in that category. Some of the magazines I researched were ‘Q’ and ‘NME’, therefore I tried to reflect my findings into my magazine; however, making sure I incorporated my own creativity into the magazine to differentiate my magazine from others in the market.

On my front cover I included a full bleed image of my artist to enable my audience to get a clear look of who the artist was in the magazine; this was commonly used in the magazines I looked at therefore I knew it would appeal to my target audience. However I made my artist look away from the camera so my audience felt more intrigued to find out what the story behind the artists it. The rest of my front cover covered the conventions of a typical magazine front cover; for example, I surrounded my artist with sell lines as this is where they were typically positioned on a magazine, I included feature artists e.g. ‘Kasabian’ and ‘Paramore’ to enable my audience to get insight of the types of artists included in my magazine. The main sell line that linked into the artist was positioned on top of the artist to highlight to the audience that the sell line is about her, in addition it was the biggest sell line to make it catch the readers eye. The masthead was a white heading surrounded by a maroon box which linked into my colour scheme, by having it in a coloured box made it stand out to the audience. Additionally I put a black and white effect on the main image which made the masthead stand out and the other sell lines around the front cover. Finally I included the issue number, price, and barcode at the bottom of my front cover to make my magazine look professional for my audience.

Additionally, the contents  page in my magazine links into the typical conventions of a magazine for example the layout of contents, as it is split up into sections e.g. ‘Features’, ‘Exclusives’ etc, this allowed the reader to navigate to their desired page much easier. I also inserted more than one image into my contents page similar to what ‘Q’ does to make my contents more visual for audience instead of using continuous text, this also would enabled my reader to get some visual idea of what content is included in my magazine. I made sure that in my contents page that I used the same colour scheme I used in my front cover so my pages where continuous throughout. Finally I remembered to include social networking information and subscription information at the bottom of the page for my reader.

My first double page spread consisted of a second full bleed image that was in landscape – on the image I changed some of the lighting effects to make the image more effective and eye catching for the reader. On top of this image I included a quote in a large font and white text, again to create a house colour scheme. Having the large quote on the image gave my audience an idea of what the main article was about.

My second double page spread included the main article. I positioned the text of the article on the left hand side as typically this is the first side the reader will look at; in addition I sorted my article into to block columns as this is typically used in magazines as it makes the article look overall more professional and appealing for the reader to read. I made the ‘interviewer’ and ‘interviewee’s’ text two different colours again to make it easier for the reader. Finally, I included a mid shot of my artist on the right hand side again tweaking the lighting of the image. On top of the image I included the artists name to again highlight who the article was about.