Evaluation - Question 1

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

Conventional music magazines tend to denote information on how artists live their lives, new and upcoming artists and what collaborations are taking place in the industry. Throughout the construction process of my music magazine ‘LOUD’, I have followed the conventions of a corporate magazine that would generally appear on any shelf whilst still breaking free of some traditional conventions, adding uniqueness to my media product. There are however many common conventions that every magazine needs to be classed as a magazine, for example, due to the magazine being distributed it requires a barcode. In order for me to achieve the same looking aesthetics as a professional magazine, I took inspiration from the music magazine ‘VIBE’. My front cover uses a skyline with names of various R&B/Hip-Hop artists to attract the audience to my magazine as they know it will provide content surrounding these artists. VIBE magazine inspired me to do this as it allows the magazine skyline to be visible even when the magazines may be stacked, allowing maximisation of profit.

I stuck to the traditional masthead convention, my masthead covering the length of the top of my front cover and being the biggest size font on the page. Also, I’ve used the same font (arial black) consistently.

The colour scheme of my magazine is also common, a deep palette of red and grey with a combination of yellow on my contents page. This follows the form of existing media products that tend to use no more than four main colours to allow the magazine to be memorable. I have also used one main image and no additional images to prevent distraction from the main focal point of the magazine – artist ‘CMRN’. The main image is a medium close-up shot of a male wearing a watch (jewellery is a common representation of male dominance and power). Also, the subject is commonly making direct address, allowing for a relationship to be established with the audience. Puffs are now a necessity when creating a successful magazine, so by having a puff I have provided more opportunity for audience interactivity with the magazine online, possibly leading to them wanting to purchase future editions .Following these traditional layouts has allowed my magazine cover to have a clean, professional appearance.

My contents page is only one page long as are most traditional music magazines’. Music magazines also tend to have no more than two images in the contents page to prevent target audience distraction, therefore I used only one image. The contents page is similar to the conventions that I have included in my front cover, all title pages are concise and do not reveal a lot, but enough to entice the reader. The contents masthead is also the biggest thing on the page along with the main image which is a medium shot, showing the body of the female subject. My masthead doesn’t follow traditional magazine conventions, the letters being scattered and it being in the left upper corner rather than taking up the entire width of the page. I have chosen not to comply with this convention as I was inspired by VIBE magazine’s contents page, it making the magazine more memorable to me. I also included a large number 7 in my masthead to represent that it is the seventh issue of 'LOUD' magazine, something particularly uncommon. Another necessary convention I used was the page numbers at the bottom of the pages alongside the ‘LOUD’ logo, in order not to confuse the readers and ensure they know what they’re reading (referred from the contents page). Also to keep the professionalism and creditability of my music magazine, I wrote under the articles of my contents page the name of the photographer (not real) and who wrote the article in order to inform the reader of important and key information.

A typical convention of double page spreads are drop capitals to tell the audience where the article starts. I chose to include this in my double page spread article as I feel it’s key in driving the reader’s attention towards the article. The colour scheme of my double page spread is consistent with the theme used on my front cover, helping to build on the house theme as well as keeping the layout concise and specific to the main article. The article title is bold text boxes and its font is very different to both of the contents page and front cover, this is so the double page can almost feel detached from the rest of the magazine, which shows that the article is the most important.