Evaluation - Question 1

Question 1

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

Masthead

For my masthead I decided stay with the original I used last year as I felt the style would still work for the magazine I am re-doing as the target audience is still the same and so by keeping the same masthead would still appeal to them in the same way and the reason I continue to know this is if you are to look at other music magazines similar to my product for example NME and Q magazine you can see they continue to use the same colour palette as they did last year.

Yet again the same as last year I felt the positioning of the masthead would continue to look effective and professional if the masthead was partially behind the model, and as the front cover has minimal changing it was just a case of changing the image and tweaking a few other adjustments.

Images

The images are all new from last year as I felt that these were one of the weak points of my magazine and as it came around to re-doing my work my idea for what I wanted my images to look like had also changed. I have taken much of my inspiration from the magazine called YOU, this is a magazine linked to a well known newspaper and with the style and layout something I found appealing and inspiration for my product I felt this was ample enough information to use this for inspiration.

My images as a whole, in my opinion, seem to reflect the mood I am trying to convey in my product as the front cover image show a model looking relaxed, staring directly at the camera. This is not only a conventional image to use but also a very clever way of enticing people into the magazine because when using a image on the front cover if a model is looking directly at you, when you look at the magazine it gives the illusion that it is looking at you and so draws you in, as well as the appearance of the magazine.

The images on my contents page are a mixture of styles as I have used a big image of a model wearing a eye catching scarf and a simple white scarf to entice readers into reading the remainder of the magazine as I feel although the magazine isnít about fashion however feel that if I can create something eye catching it can draw people in, for example look at NME/Q they use images of band members wearing leather jackets and long hair, this is going to impress and appeal a niche audience and by using this technique in my magazine I feel I am again following the conventions of a magazine. The white shirt could symbolise the white of the page and then the interesting colours from the scarf could represent the interesting information that is then on that page. Looking more technically about the significance of the image could be that the white represents purity and truthfulness from my articles and the purple (although not my colour palette however when producing a contents page it is often more professional/conventional if you donít have the main colours using the colours from you magazine as then the magazine seems to look to clean and calculated and all you want is for your readers to simply enjoy the magazine. The other images I have used on my contents page were images that I have created to represent CD covers as I thought it would look to have a strip of albums that represent different artist and I would be another way for readers to have a visual example of the people who are going to be shown in the magazine, which is another convention I have used in my product.

Font

I am not strictly following conventions when it comes to the use of font as I am using 3 different fonts on my product however feel that three different choices of font is practical enough as you need to co-ordinate different sections of the magazine with different styles and I have decided to block them off by using different font rather than bold lines which might ruin the effect of the magazine.

The masthead is something I wish to continue using the same font for the masthead however decided to have a look over some of the other choices I was thinking about last year:

Cambria (body) - TODAY

Ayuthaya - TODAY

BIG CASLON - TODAY

COURIR - TODAY

DIDOT - TODAY

FUTURA - TODAY

LETTER GOTHIC STD - TODAY

LITHOS PRO REGULAR ñ TODAY

MENLO - TODAY

MOACO - TODAY

PRESTIGE ELITE STD BOLD ñ TODAY

BRITANNIC BOLD ñ TODAY

Gill Sans MT ñ TODAY

Lucida Calligraphy ñ AaBbCc

Again, I decided to use Futura as this font seemed to work the best on how thin I wanted my text to look on my product, the thinness of the text is to suggest cleanness and simplicity and after looking back through other magazines I can see that by using this style of font I would still be conforming to conventions as other organisation use this style for example Q magazine.

Different from last year I have decided to use Gills Sans MT for the sell-lines con the front cover†and the reason for this change is because I felt that the text looked better on the page and by adding a drop shadow to the font they seemed to have a more professional style to the rest of the front page.

I have decided to use Plantagenet Cherokee for the big Emeli on front cover as I felt that using a big text as well as a different style of font would attract readers to the name of this new artist. When using different font I have tried to use it so that it would make a statement rather than just using a different font here and there and this way it will help me to focus the audience eye on what I want them to see, which is a conventional technique used in professional magazines.

Content

I have followed conventions when it comes to the content of my magazine and have even changed the whole of my article for my double page spread as I felt the style of text I was using would not be appealing to my audience as it was more of a younger audience as it was a questions and answer set up and so decided to look at other pieces of text to gather ideas of how I could improve my product and decided to use a more informative style of text where the reader gets told the information but in such a way that the audience feels part of it for example when introducing the artist I will describe where the artist has just been doing as so they can build up a picture as to what, when and how the interview took place.

The main conventional that I am following is that I am doing a music magazine and I am including information relating to music in my magazine.