Evaluation 1 FINAL

Question 1.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of music magazines)

Because the magazine style I chose was of a unique and dated style which you don’t see in shops anymore I had to do a lot of research into 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s homemade magazines, also looking at highly rated magazines that are popular with the public because although it’s a dated magazine the audience will still expect to see a magazine that relates to modern day magazines. Combining both to will create a modern yet old fashion handmade magazine. When doing my research into the magazines that covered the genres I wanted to cover I found that most of these used conventions, making the magazine look professional, promoting the look of their magazine in order to please their target audience.

When doing my research I looked at two different styles of magazines so I could combine both to create something original and different, I looked at magazines which you see in shows now such as Kerrang, NME and RockSound, but then looking at more dated magazines such as Sniffin’ Glue and Slice. I took inspiration from Slice, using their pizza face idea and incorporating it into my magazine, altering it to be burgers instead of pizza slices, also taking the stance of the models on the front cover and creating the same look with my models. I created badge style pictures for the front cover to produce the more rock appearance which covered the different rock genres within my magazine, giving the magazine more of an edge and fitted more with the handmade style.   

When it came to the contents page and my double page spread, my main inspiration came from Kerrang, NME and RockSound, taking the most common colour scheme of Kerrang (red, black and white) and applying that to my magazine. Because my magazine was dull and grimy the colours consisted of black and white, then making key parts of the pages red, but keeping it with the grimy sense of the magazine and making the colour dim but still able to stand out. The layout idea of my contents page took inspiration from NME, filling over half the page with an image while using smaller images at the bottom and the actual contents list. For my double page spread most of the magazines I researched implied using the layout of a picture covering one side of the double page spread, possibly bleeding over, while the article or interview was laid out of the other half of the page. Although I got inspiration from modern magazines I still incorporated the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s handmade style into my magazine, using an old fashioned type witting font to give the handmade impression that it was only typed via the typewriter, also editing the pictures I used to give them and aged and grimy appearance, as if they were taken with an old camera and have ages over time.
I have challenged mainstream conventions through how my front cover has been laid out, not following the rules of where things are advised to be placed of the page. I chose to take this risk because I thought by challenging this I am presenting  my magazine to standout from others, it’s not filled up with writing, I made it minimalistic so it looks neat and cleaner allowing the main focus to be the image which takes up the entire page and sets the mood of the magazine. This then catching the readers eye, showing them how different this magazine is from other music magazines, making them interested in what the contents of the magazine is as well.    

It was very important for me to do a lot of research into the magazines which reflected a similar genre to what I wanted to present in my magazine, what I found influenced my magazine largely as I used ideas which I might not have thought of to create the dated magazine I wanted. They affected my decisions because when analysing other magazines you relate to why they used certain conventions in order to gain their target audience and promote their magazine.