Evaluation By Michael Gray

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

The conventions of a music magazine always consists of the headline, cover lines and many factors trying to lure in the reader. However my magazine goes totally against the normal rules. From the very start I have aimed to keep my magazine simplistic and modern. Using other magazines such ‘indie’ and ‘Victory’ have helped me be inspired by these design. My design consists of a simplistic design so no colourful cover lines. I have stuck to plain colours for text, this gives the magazine a more mature feel. The front cover normally has a high quality photo at the front this is the key ingredient to attract readers. My front cover has this and to other magazine I have gone with a double page picture and made it into my front cover. The picture fills the whole page and only has a few cover lines in plain white. Normally the usual magazine layout would be colour clustered covers however my cover goes against this.

A typical contents page always shows what is inside the magazine, the contents page will always show pictures and the page number. For example contents pages from magazines such as NME and Porter differ incredibly. The layout for NME is more clustered and colourful, they have everything onto one page and it seems hard to read. Whereas Porter has a neater layout, less cluster and more contemporary appearance. The contents would normally be separated into sections, this can make the reader feel less intimidated by the clustered layout. The layout of which I would be inspired to. Double page spreads also change in design, a typical layout would be a double page picture with text on one side. The picture would be a interesting image to really tell the persons story well. The double page can be a interview style, an article written by the person or even a review.

However my contents page, is yet again the opposite of the typical clustered layout. I have chosen to keep it simple and laid out in sections. I chose a white background to blend with the simplistic layout. The sections are illustrated with a rectangular picture and with the page number on top of the picture. Then underneath shows the sections with the according page number.

Different approach Throughout the whole process of making a music magazine I wanted to be

different. I would see endless similarity of each magazine I would see and sometimes I would see a different type of layout. These layouts inspired me to aim for a contemporary and simplistic layout. All three of my magazines designs I have made a different layout of each one. The front cover is very simplistic and only has a few cover lines. However what I think draws the audiences attention is the colourful photo, the photo opens up to become a double page image. This also creates a different approach to the magazine industry. I want to make my magazine stand out and make people think this is very unique and different.

Normal Ingredients for a music magazine Front cover- cover lines, masthea

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