Evaluation Question One

The Question

In what way does my media product challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My Front Cover

When designing and creating my front cover I made sure to include many conventions that are already present in and on media music magazines for example I included

• A barcode at the bottom of the front cover
  
• A masthead (title) of the magazine at the top of the front cover
  
• A website address
  
   
• Cover lines and articles on the side of the page
  
• A main image of the featured artist
  
• Issue number of the magazine
• The date of the issue
  
• I used words such as 'exclusive' or 'new' and these words are used to attract audiences as it makes them feel that they are reading something special
  

However whilst I kept to many existing codes and conventions of a magazine front cover something that differs from these on my front cover is that all of my cover stories are on one side leaving the other blank. This is different from other magazines as most spread them out over the cover. Something that I found particularly difficult in the production of my front cover was trying to create something different that stands out whilst sticking to codes and conventions of magazine front covers.I think that my front cover has managed to form to look like a front cover of a magazine that could be sold in the shops as conventions of magazines and the styles I used follow what is already out there but also includes different features- for example having the main image look away from the camera which could suggest shyness, embarrassment and nervousness a quality that could draw more members of my target audience in as they may identify with these feelings.

My Contents Page

Whilst designing my contents page I kept to a traditional layout of the articles down one side of the page, a title at the top, page numbers at the bottom as well as an image of the main feature to emphasise the importance and to attract more audiences to the article. I included a different font on this page to add detail to the article lines, and this font was then used throughout on my double page spread.I also ensured that the magazine articles were of interest to my target audience as they are the ones who will be reading the magazine.

I chose to keep the colours on the contents page the same as the colours used on front cover to ensure that they could be identified as part of the same product something that I did not manage to do in my preliminary task. The brush styled writing was something I choose as it links to the title/ masthead on the front cover and then again creates a bond between the pages.

The featured articles were place all to one side one after another and this stuck with conventions used in many music magazines 

I decided to do a separate box for the main featured article to ensure that every reader would be able to know straight away where to find the article that was featured on the front.

I included these on the contents page to ensure that the magazine is relatable to the readers every day lives as technology is such a big part of many peoples life I thought it was important to include it on the contents page 

I placed the date of the issue and the magazine website at the bottom of the page along with the page number as this was a key convention that featured in many other pop (and in general music) magazines. 

Double Page Spread

I placed some screenshots of my double page spread above, these images show some of the conventions that I followed whilst creating this article. The first image of the headline uses the same font as the masthead on the front cover and contents page this links all of the separate products together to create one final product. The colour used however varies from the blues used on the first two pages as it is now linking with the image on the double page spread and the way that the article will come across- calm, collected and new. The next image is of the date, website and page number on one side of the double page spread. These pieces were included as it is a key convention and feature of a magazine and the colour I used (blue) links the article again back to the other products. Next is the box placed at the end of the article to indicate that it continues on the next page, this was something that I noticed appeared in other music magazines when the articles continued to other pages and was something I was key to replicate if the opportunity arose. Lastly is an image of my article, something that I did which I had not seen in other magazine was to use the instrument to overlap the text box and wrap the text around the image. I think that this brought something different to the article.