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

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

When I was designing my magazine I looked at magazines that included artists from the charts, pop/dance music, Billboard was the magazine that related to my music the most because of the artists that were featured. Artists like Rihanna, M.I.A and Beyonce a lot that are included in my playlist on my blog.

I looked at Spin's magazine mast head and made mine similar because I liked the idea of it being in the top left of the cover instead of cover the whole top third of the page.
Esquires issue to the right I really liked and decided to use the colour theme because i think each colour worked really well together. I also had my artist wearing an all black outfit as the model in the Esquire magazine so that it went with the colour scheme. The colour theme that I chose is very different to the typical magazine which is why it was a challenge for me to try and make it look right. I think the fonts that I decided to use made my magazine look less realistic because they were just plain simple fonts that didn't really have anything special about each font. 



I looked at various double page spreads and the ones that jumped out at me where the ones that had the image on the whole left of the page and the article on the opposing page. I was inspired by flavour's double page spread therefore I had a mid body shot of my artist on the left page as this double page on the right. I like this layout because its simple but I think its really effective because the eyes are instantly drawn to the image on the artist. I used a page number at the bottom of the page to make it look more like a magazine. I used the grid lines on Photoshop to check that the image took up exactly one page of the double page spread to make look more like a magazine. 




This is another example of the image being on the left page, but I also developed the article. I liked the idea of an interview instead of just talking about the artist, it gives the reader a sense of reality because the words would be from the artist. To make my magazine look more realistic i included my logo on the double page spread like this example has. I did i drop cap letter at the start of my article to make it look more like a magazine as its popular in many magazines. 

The layout of the right hand side of this double page I used to develop because i liked the idea of the coloured blocks to cut each section up so i decided to use the blocks and work it with my colour theme. I also like how the images are all up the right side of the page so I used that idea but put black bordered round each of my three images. Additionally the majority of the images in this example are mid shots which I used in my contents page, on each of the photos there are different coloured circles. I used this idea but changed it to my colour theme, i didn't use as many as this example has because my contents page already included plenty of my main colour turquoise as the coloured block the content sections.

The iconography in my magazine matches the genre of music my magazine is based on, the model I have used has big bouncy curly hair which reflects the bouncy upbeat genre of music. Also my model "Taylor" is never pulling a serious face, she always looks like shes happy and having fun which could connote that the music a happier tone of music that others and people have fun while listening to them. Which can be true because the charts music is aimed at a the teenage audience, who would be listening to this music with their friends having a good time.

I used the regular magazine conventions by including a bar code, issue number, month of issue and price which are essential things to make it look like a magazine. These essentials went in the top right of my cover page when usually then go somewhere in the bottom third of the page, but after a play around I chose to go for the top third of the page because of the image that I decided to use it didn't look right having the bar code, price, issue number and month at the bottom.

Overall the magazine I created doesn't follow all the regular conventions of a mainstream magazine, I have tried to challenge the odd regular convention but the majority of my work is using and developing parts of various magazines.