Evaluation question 1:

Lucy Clarke

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions

of real media products?

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

products?

Firstly, I had a look and researched into many music magazines of the genre I wanted to base mine around and used and developed ideas from the other magazines. This helped me when it came to producing my own media product in which I could work off. I also used celebrities to give an inspired look to all my models used in the front cover, contents page and double page spread. I based the inspired looks off celebrities that have clear links and represent my target audience of 11-19+ year olds.

Front cover I used forms and conventions of real media products as on the front cover, I used the rule of thirds on my front cover to structure my magazine front cover and to help me frame it. Also I found that in similar magazines to my own, they all had references to social media on the front, I found this useful as my target is aimed at 11-19+ year olds. Most teenagers use media and technology on a day to day basis. Having a social media reference on my product would appeal to teenagers who would use the social media. This also makes my magazine a multi media product as there are other ways of reading/viewing the magazine other than buying it. My layout and structure to my front cover is similar to a music magazine of the chart music genre, as I took into consideration the forms and conventions of a music magazine and used things like a plug, a header, buzz words and a continued colour scheme as well as a large main image. I am happy with my front cover as it appeals to my target audience and had a lot of positive feedback from friends who fall in to my target audience category.

Contents page I also looked at having a sidebar for my contents page running down the right hand side of the page. This was because I found it was a regular occurrence in a variety of music magazines to have a side bar showing what is inside the magazine. This encouraged me to do the same so I knew that I was following the forms and conventions of a music magazine and then I knew I was on the right track. I also had a variety of other pictures that too were articles inside the music magazine. This made the contents page look more busy and more detailed. Lastly, I saw most contents pages in music magazines had page numbers which indicates what the magazine consisted of and what page number the specific article was to help the reader. I like seeing a natural background in the music magazines contents page, so I kept the background the curtain of the photo shoot and added a light pink colour to stick with the colour scheme of pink, purple white and black, for continuity reasons.

Double page spreadFor my double page spread, I used a model called Esther to pose with a guitar for my original images. This was idea an I got from other music magazines of the genre I am basing mine on which is chart music. Having a musical instrument on show in a magazine can signify to the genre of the magazine is music. There fore the reader wont confuse the magazine with a fashion/reality magazine. This came as helpful to me as I worried about my magazine looking like a fashion magazine, so I used a musical instrument to make the genre more obvious. I also used a drop cap which was a commonly used thing in a double page spread article. Also, after searching into magazines found out what a pull was and how to make one. This was also commonly used in a double page spread. However, the pull quote is normally seen in the middle of the article other known as text warping. I wanted to do this, but when I came to doing so, it wouldn’t allow me and there was something wrong with the software which enabled me to do so. Although, I still incorporated a pull quote into my double page spread but it had to go on the side instead of inside the article text.