Media Evaluation

Question 1; in what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

To start my project, I chose to research a variety of existing magazine in the same line of genres as mine to see how they also used the conventions of a magazine to appeal to their chosen target audience. There were a lot of different ways that the product I produced developed kept and rejects the conventions of real magazines. In my music magazine I used some conventions to symbolise a real music magazine and portray my magazine to look more professional. One of the conventions which I developed was my masthead. Although I kept to some of the traditional conventions by placing my masthead at the top of the page and making it bigger which dominated the rest of the text I also had one of the words on a slate. This developed the masthead as it isn’t typical of music magazine to display their mastheads as I did mine but I felt it sorted the genre of my magazine. As my magazine was Indie, it often breaks the forth wall of traditional themes by developing existing styles or often changeling what is seen to be normal or ‘mainstream’. Although I did change my masthead a bit I kept to some of the basic ‘rules’ to still make it recognisable for the audience that I wanted to attract. I chose san serif for the front on my front cover, contents page and double page spreads which I got from defont.com I downloaded a certain type of style to do this. I chose to do this because it gave a modern look to my magazine, which made the magazine look more professional and suitable for the audience I wanted to attract. I chose to involve my front cover model in the masthead as it gave it a unique look without losing the professional look I tried to obtain throughout my project.

Another code of conversations which I used but I did not change and kept the same in order from the audience to identify the magazine was its bar codes. The bar code was placed at the bottom of the page, in the right handed corner on top of my bar code. This is usual and I felt as if it would look unprofessional if I didn’t include it as well.  

A way in which I attracted my chosen audience was by using cover lines; this is always another convention communal used throughout magazines as a whole. Cover lines give the audience/reader an insight into what the magazine as features. This is a good way into attracting my audience as they can see the types of interest they have which the magazine will include.  To use my cover lines correctly and get the most out of them I chose a colour which contrast and make it stand out to the background, this made it eye-catching allowing me to attract my chosen audience.  I used the same fronts for my cover lines except for the main cover lines as it’s the feature of the magazine. Also the main cover line and image linked with each other; and the kick exp lines. They acted as the main selling point of the magazine so it had to stand out from the rest. I chose to do this to kept with the codes of conventions to attract my auditions and attract my chosen audience. Also when I researched different magazines at the start of my project it was clear that this would give my magazine a professional and typical, clean and neat look which I wanted my magazine to portray instead of a messy, unprofessional one. From the research I found that most were arranged vertically, on the sides of the page, which guided and help me know where to put them. My cover lines were placed on the right side of the front cover as well as the left side in order to not make it look too busy and evenly spaced out so it wouldn’t detract the chosen audience away from the image too much.

Also  a popular convention of  music magazines which I had researched were using  a medium close up as the dominant image on their front cover magazine, in my magazine I decided to use a medium long shot it makes the image more ‘in your face’ and creates an illusion of being close with the model. The model is also posed in a way which would catch peoples eyes and attract the audience which I felt suits my target audience.

Following my front cover, I also created my contents page by using some conventions in real magazines. To start I included other images, which is a commonly used convention in magazines. The images and setting were simple and not to buy allowing my reader to look at each thing one by one in detail and not get a headache. A lot of magazines would do this as it would draw a bigger audience in who would normal read magazines but feel overwhelmed at the same time. A way in which I attract my chosen audience was by including photos that linked to my front over and gave a sense of unity. 

As well as that my double page spread used some basic conventions. Firstly I used a simple colour scheme which also linked in with my front cover and double page spread but I still added a different colour separated them slightly at the same time so that my audience would not get confused but still allow the magazine to create its own professional and modern style. Also I arranged my article into two columns, with a headline and a stand first; however in order to make it more traditional and more suited for my target audience I included a a photo underneath the columns. This would attract the audiences’ creative eye and is complete to layout for the articles and articles in future.