EVALUATION OF “BOOM” MAGAZINE

By Sheetal Dabasia

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the conventions of real media

products?The “Vibe” conventions for the masthead is the large bold writing, being covered slightly by the

central image

The “Vibe” conventions for the central image is,

they are mostly placed in the middle or occasionally

to the side, with the “model” looking directly

at the camera.

The “Vibe” conventions for the cover line, is that the main article is mostly the largest text on the front

cover, relating back to the central image as well, giving

more of an insight to the audience

The “Vibe” conventions for the barcode is, they are mainly placed at the bottom on the cover on

either side, sometimes on its side and sometimes

straight

The “Vibe” conventions for the eyebrow is,

majority of the “Vibe” magazines will have an

eyebrow at the top of the cover.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the conventions of real media

products?

On my magazine cover, I went with the tradition convention of a large and bold

masthead behind the central image.

Another convention that I followed was that the

largest text on the front cover is the main article inside the magazine and

relates to the central image.

I placed my central image to the right of the page, leaving room on the left to promote

what is in the magazine, I used a female so that my

magazine would attract both genders and made the

image large showing that the female plays a big part on

this edition of the magazine.

“Vibe” has their barcode rotated in several ways in

new editions of the magazine, but I decided to go against

the convention of the sample cover that I used to make it

look different.

I went along with the convention of an eyebrow,

this shows the readers what may be inside the magazine

as they are all RnB artists

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the conventions of real media

products?

The “Vibe” conventions for the central image is a long shot, placed on the right side of the page, they are

looking directly at the camera which is quite

common in the vibe content pages. The central image of

the content page would attract males readers just as much as female readers as

the 2 ladies are wearing rather revealing clothes making themselves look

quite sexual and appealing to mean.

The “Vibe” conventions for the sub heading is that the font if different compared to the rest of the font used on the page, making it stand out showing

that it is a sub heading.

“contents” is in a large font, bold and also black so that it

stands out from the grey background. The word has been broken down into chucks, which

isn’t very conventional for regular magazines.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the conventions of real media

products?I followed the convention of a large font for “Contents” and I

also went along with the idea of an unconventional way of

writing “Contents”. Something I did different was add an outline

to the text and used another font compared to the sample

contents page.

As for the central image I followed the conventions of having the image to the right

of the page, putting two images of the same person

together instead of two different people. I made him have an intense look on his face to attract the female

audience to read the magazine. Another thing I did

was cut off the legs of the model rather than having an

full long shot.

The “Vibe” conventions for the sub heading is that the font if different, so I went along with that convention, changing the font to something more script like in the sample that I have

analysed, but this time I gave it an outline to make it stand

out.

This is not present in the contents page sample that I used, I went completely against the conventions

and added an extra bit of text to the right corner of

the page and made it large with an outline in

order for it to draw attention from the

audience.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the conventions of real media

products?The “Vibe”

convention for the page number is put

on the top corners of the pages, one on

the left and one on the right, along with

their website too.

The first page on the double page spread has a full

bleed image of the artist, the artist is not giving direct

eye contact to the camera either, the artist has a speaker box as a prop in the image giving up an

hint about what it is that he does.

Credit has ben given to the photographer at the bottom

of the image in very small text, something that is

conventional with a lot of magazines, not just “Vibe”.

The article is set in 3 columns, this article is a interview, hence the reason why the questions are in bold. They have separated the

questions and answers together leaving space in between.

This is the heading of the double page spread, the

convention of the heading is that, each word is in

the same font but in different font sizes, they have

also used 2 different colours.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the conventions of real media

products?I also have an full bleed image on the

first page of my double page

spread, following the vibe convention of the sample that I earlier analysed. I

have made my model sit on a

music box, with headphones in her ears making it look stereotypical of an artist and again my

model is not looking directly to the camera either.

Credit has been given to the photographer at the bottom

of the image in very small text, something that is

conventional with a lot of magazines, not just “Vibe”.

I challenged the conventions of the page number, by

placing it in the bottom right corner of the right page

along with the website for my magazine.

The double page spread that I

analysed did not have an

Discography, it was just an

interview, so I went against that convention and

added an discography for

Nicole Scherzinger into

my article.

I followed the convention of the

heading for my double page

spread, but did not use other colours, I only used black, which goes partly

against the convention.

Here I went completely against the typical conventions of a

double page spread and added an image in the middle of my article. I thought I would be a

little rebellious and make it my own.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Design construction… The colours I have used for my contents page are, Black, blue & red. I kept this theme going on from the front cover and made very few changes. The reasons why I picked these colours is cause they work for both genders, they are all pretty dark colours and stand out as they are bold. I have used a variety of fonts, representing that nothing is the same in the music industry, everything is different and everyone is different individually.

The broken up “contents” represents that the younger generation are willing to try new things and not make everything look so simple.

The colours I have used for my double page spread are again, Red, black and blue, with a hint of white in the text. Red is a good representation for a girl, red is the colour of “Love” and this way it shows that the artist obviously loves their career. I haven’t used many different fonts on the double page spread as I wanted it too look a little neutral and not over done as this is a magazine for 16-25 year olds and not for small kids.

How did you attract/address your

audience?

Using teenagers as my models

Turning my models into award winning artists that people would recognise

I used some informal language which my

target audience could adapt to

The colour scheme is quite bold and

stands out, not plain or boring

I kept the images rather large so that

they would stand out

I kept my contents page simple but

added 2 large images of a attractive male

to gain the attention of female readers

I made sure my article was interesting so that my audience wouldn’t get bored of reading it I added a discography in

my article so that my audience could search up the artist’s music if

need be

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have used a wide variety of technologies to construct my product, but the two main programmes that I used to construct my music magazine was adobe InDesign and Photoshop. At first I found using both InDesign and Photoshop rather hard, they were fairly new to me and their was a lot to learn, but later on I started to pick up on everything. I used Microsoft word to type up my article in, this one software that I’m very familiar with so I had no both using it. A lot of the information that I gathered for my article I found from the internet when I was doing my research. I found the websites using Google search engine, this gave me a wide choices of websites that I could look at to help me with my research.

For my photo-shoot's I used the TV studio in college, for the first photo-shoot I used a white backdrop & from my second photo-shoot I used the black backdrop along with the overhead spot lights so that the flash on the camera that I was using was not needed. The camera I used was a Nikon SLR. I didn’t use a camera stand as I wanted to get shoots from various angles. Using the camera wasn’t a problem for me as I have used SLR’s in the past and pick up on new things like that quite quickly. In order to upload any presentations or word documents I have to use “slideshare”, which is a long process but is the best way to view the documents.

Looking back at your preliminary exercise, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it

to the full product?Every time I look back out the preliminary exercise I fell like that was when I didn’t know anything about constructing a magazine, it looks so childish and unfinished compared to my music magazine. I really learnt how to put together a magazine, how to use all of the available software's for editing. My college magazine looks rather messy and all over the place, where as my music magazine looks neat and shows that I’ve spent a lot of time on it to make it look good. I learnt that the way a product looks is very important, the audience won’t be interested unless it stands out to them, this includes the use of colours, the layout and the way the text is written out, depending on what your target age group is. Planning the college magazine was easy, the photos didn’t have to be perfect, whereas for my music magazine they had to be perfect if I want people to actually be interested in my magazine. A lot of research and planning went into my final product, without this it would be incomplete and would all over the place, it was so important that I planned out exactly what I wanted it to look like and what I wanted in my magazine too.