Evaluation: Question 1

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

Title:

When creating my title I took into consideration: The colour scheme of my magaazine, the genre, magazine conventions and the customers needs.
I had previously created a questionnaire with one of the questions asking my audience what colour scheme they think would best represent my magazine and their response was red, white and black. Taking this into consideration I decided to have the masthead red as I wanted the title to be the most eye catching piece of text on the page. It would have been less effective if the title was black because then the red text would dominate the page and strip away the boldness of the title.
The title of the magazine is 'Shout!' which connotes loudness and attitude which is what I wanted to portray, the exclamation mark in the title also empahasised this. The genre of my magazine is popular rock and I feel that noise is a huge part of it, which is where the name stemed from.
I placed my masthead at the very top of the page and slightly to the left which follows the usual conventions of a magazine cover. It also means that this is the first thing seen on the cover, which is good as you want this to be the most memorable thing.
The title being placed right at the top is also more convenient for the customers as they look at other magazines and it is in the same place they know where exactly to find it. The font of it is very bold and spaced out which I chose because I wanted to make sure the audience could see it clearly and not struggle to know what the title was. I also think that this boldness matches the name, because when you shout your words are pronounced more clearly so I wanted to duplicate the exact effect that this had. Although I wanted it to be clear I still wanted it to have some edge which i think it has.
Usually the issue number and date of the magazine is placed at the bottom of the page along with the barcode, however I decided to go against this convention and place it at the top left just underneath the title. I did this because it looked too jumbled at the bottom of the page and there was a white place where it would go perfectly on top of. I also think placing it at the top of the page is more beneficial for customer as they are able to know if they have got the correct issue and if they have missed any.

Models:

 

 

I chose three models to appear in my magazine.
The first was my friend Molly who was the cover artist for my music magazine. Although she does not fit the stereotype of a typical rock artist, I gave her a makeover so I could give her the image that I pictured my cover artist to have.
The second was my brother, as he is a DJ himself I felt that he would be a good model as he is already familiar with the music world.
The third model was my dad, although he does not look like a music artist I felt that he would be good to feature as a band manager on the cover and contents page.

Costumes:

I wanted to give my images a range of mese-en-scene so that is why I chose three models and different oufits (costumes) to go with them.
My cover artist had a few oufit changes but I chose to style her in casual clothing that a normal artist would wear as I wanted to the audience to be able to relate to her and see certain similarities within them. The colours used within her oufits were mainly grey and black with a leather jacket in a few shots and lots of jewellery worn, this follows usual trends in what this type of artist would wear. I also changed her hair and makeup in different photos so that the photos didn't look similar and I could have a range of shots to choose from.
I styled 'Damon' the other musical act in a t-shirt and headphones around his neck, which shows his love and passion for music. I didn't pay as much attention to the mese-en-scene in this photoshoot as I knew that only one image would be included on the contents page.
I wanted the band manager to look smart and professional which is why I styled him in a white shirt and suit and in some images he was wearing glasses. I looked at photographs of other band managers for inspiration.

Written Content:

The writing on the cover is very straight to the point, using colloquial language, this engages the audience more as they do not want to struggle when reading what articles are inside, they just want to be quickly informed otherwise they will not bother to read it.
The writing on the contents page was also fairly informal as I wanted all of the detail to be within the actual articles.
For the double page spread I chose to have an interview with the cover artist as I feel that this is one of the most interesting types of articles for fans to read as they can get to know the artist and see what they are like as a person. Within the article I used certain quotes that I thought would engage the audience when they are seperate becuase it shows a statement and gives the audience a rough idea of what the interview is about.

Layout:

I chose to stick to as many magazine conventions as I could with the cover because I wanted to make it look as proffessional as possible:
The masthead is at the top of the page.
The image of the cover artist takes up the whole of the background.
The articles are either side of the model.
The anchorage text is near the middle to the bottom of the page.
The barcode is at the bottom of the page.
I have included a puff and a skyline.
I did however use more than one image on the cover which I found wasn't done very often which challenged a usual convention of a real media product.


I followed usual conventions of real music magazines when creating my contents page:
The title,'contents', was kept at the top of the page.
The features were kept sepearte to the normal contents.
A few images were used, with numbers corresponding to the page number it's on.
A subscription box was used at the bottom to further promote the magazine.
The page number was included at the bottom along with the title of the magazine.
I did however use the letter 'S' instead of writing 'Shout!' which rebels against usal magazine conventions.


The double page spread followed usual conventions:
The masthead was placed at the top along with the artists name.
A brief description of the article/interview was underneath the title.
One image was placed on the right, covering the whole entire page.
The interview was on the entire left page.
The artists album was included after the interview to promote her music.
Certain quotes were highlighted to draw attention to specific statements.
The page numbers were written at the bottom along with the magazine name.

Extras:

I decided to give my cover artist an album cover.

Her story is that she has been out of the music business for a year and she is back, in the interview she talks about returning with new music so I thought that I would include a picture of the album cover at the bottom of the page to promote her music to her fans.