Evaluation Question 1

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (I.e. of music magazines)

Some of the conventions that I looked at when researching magazines is the use of cover lines to give the reader a quick glimpse of what types of stories are going to be included in the magazine. I found that on most magazines the cover lines on the magazine have to stand out on the front cover to catch the readers eye, to use this convention on my media product, I used cover lines at the side of the front cover and also made them a different colour so they stood out on the page and are easy to read.

Another convention that I researched when completing my research and planning was that the masthead appears mostly across the top of the page, so when using this convention I made the masthead appear across the top of the page, because this is what is mainly featured on most magazines.

  

For my fonts, I decided to use a bold font, for the mast head so that it stands out on the magazine; I have also decided to use the same font for the title on the contents so that a house style is carried through the magazine. I got this idea from billboard magazine, which is one of the magazines I looked at for inspiration because they use the same font for the masthead and the contents title, however on the cover they include different bold colours to make the masthead too stand out.

For the colour scheme I had originally decided to use pastel colours such as pale pink and yellow, which I had used for the draft. For the final magazine I changed the colour scheme to include one pale colour which is a pale pink and two bolder colours white and black for the text. Using the bolder colours meant that the paler pink stands out more in the magazine and doesn’t clash with the other colours. I have developed this convention because most pop magazines tend to use a bright bold colour as well as black and white, but I wanted to make my colour scheme different from most magazines so that my magazine stands out from other magazines.

In the images that I took for the artist I made the costume look casual, by making the artist wear jeans and a top which features the word ‘LOVE’ which stands out in the image. I also made the artist look smart by including a blazer.
I decided to make the artist look both smart and casual to create a mood for the magazine which is why I tried to use pastel colours, because most pop magazines are vibrant and create a loud vibe of which I didn’t want to create so by having the artist in smart/casual clothes meant that I created a relaxed vibe.

For the page layouts, I have decided to use various columns on my contents page because what I found when researching music magazine is that this convention is used regularly in magazines and so I wanted to reflect that design in my music magazine.
Another reason that I decided to use columns was because it makes my contents page clear and easy for the reader to read and so it is clear for them if they want to turn to a specific page in the magazine. For the layout of my front cover, I decided to place all of the cover lines on just the left side of the page so that it doesn’t overlap the image of the artist that is the main feature of the cover. Also on the cover I decide to pace the masthead across the top of the page because I found that when researching and planning, magazines either have a masthead along the top of the page or just a logo in the top corner.