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

• FRONT COVER

• Skyline - EXCLUSIVE

• Big eye catching mast head

• Slogo..

• Cover lines – all in the left third because that’s what you are more likely to see in the shop.

• Date line / price / barcode

• Splats, house style..

• In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ? (cont.)

• CONTENTS PAGE

• Well laid out page number listings, in ascending order.

• BIG clear title.

• Page number..

• Splats – House Style

• In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ? (cont.)

• DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD

• Synergy between the title and the typeface on the CD cover.

• Again continuation of house style - splats..

• Laid out, easy to read and un-formal text.

• Photography – The band prefer to keep as anonymous as possible keeping the focus on the music, and as you can see the drum is in the foreground and in focus..

• How does your media product represent particular social groups? / Who would the audience for your media product be ?

My magazine includes famous Metal/Rock bands such as Slipknot, Korn and Rammstien which appeal to my desired target audience.

Metal heads are notorious for loving their LOUD music to the extreme, so much as to feel the need to beat the living day lights out of each other in mosh pits !

They have lots of associations with the Metal (obviously) and Rock genre’s.They wear lots of black, lots of studs and usually have long hair. (see picture ^)

• I tend to agree with this comment, and I particularly like my double page spread photo.

• But towards this I have to disagree, as I think red black and white are perfect for a Metal/Rock magazine. Although my DPS is slightly garish, I only did that to produce synergies between it and the band’s CD cover.

•These are my mood boards of my favourite bands, inspirational magazines and type fonts that I liked from browsing daFont.com.

• Consistently they are rough and grimy with the same general colour scheme.

85.7% said they could imagine my magazine being sold in HMV and other specialist music shops..

..and 50.0% said in newsagents and/or post offices.

• I agree with these statements, as I have seen many less well known magazines sold from the shelves of small post offices and newsagents.

• But I could also imagine seeing it on the shelf in HMV or another dedicated music store.

• I guess it would be a good idea to also advertise on Kerrang! And Skuzz T.V. as they generally play Metal/Rock music.

Also, I would have to make sure that it was distributed by the likes of well known distributors of the likes of IPC and Bower.

• Using photo shop was an interesting experience, from being an amateur to being able to produce a magazine within 4 or 5 months is an achievement in itself !

• Strokes are a godsend, so easy to use: two quick clicks, choose your colour and your away !

• Before this project, I had used Serrif Draw which basically has the same concept of layers, so it was reasuring that photoshop had them too. They are so simple, it’s the case of “drag and drop” !

• The learning curve was enormous, pretty much straight away I was bombarded with: “free tansform”, how to design text, how to print screen, how to chage the gamma, the radiation and the lightness of a picture.

• First of all was my CD cover, this was very experimental with hap-hazard opportunistic photography. I could do better a job if I had had the skills with photo shop and/or a camera that I have now.

• And my college magazine shows the progression in my skills.

• I found a way to change the background of the image into black and white using layers which I think looks cool. But at that point I was still “stroke crazy” !