Evaluation Questions Q1

My Music Magazine Evaluation


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

Q1. My evaluation will include the information, planning and process of the production of my final magazine pages, including a front cover, double page spread and contents page. 

My Front Cover

My Double Page Spread

My Contents Page

Front Cover - My front cover overall conforms to the conventions of a real magazine, which I think is most agreeable from my main image on the over. I chose to use as my main image the main artist featured in the magazine including in the 'exclusive interview'. The image being a close up image of the male artist showing clear face expression, and use of props giving immediate information to the target audience. I chose to do this as generally all magazine covers use this sort of image to give a clear view to the audience. The target audience for my magazine being the majority male I decided to use the most popular sex on the cover.  

After eight shots of the male featured I decided to use the one used as I thought it was the most efficient with him making eye contact with the reader giving them the feeling they are involved with the artist, and can react to him. The background of the image was also removed by the programme 'Paint Shop Pro', to eliminate disturbance in the background on the image, and by using a black background I felt gave a more outstanding professional effect.

I have also conformed to a real magazine cover due to the Mast head and Slogan featured on my front cover. Like other magazines, I have used a short and simple masthead that can be remembered by the audience, also being visible on the cover in bold bright and large font to catch consumers eyes.

However I did decide to only use one subsidiary image on my front cover, and use a lot more sell lines. I challenged the conventions of a magazine cover as a majority use a lot of subsidiary images. Although with my front cover,  I thought the sell lines worked better with the layout of the cover, instead of using a lot more images making the page look crowded. I think that my page conforms to the conventions of a magazine layout as I got my ideas from other covers, shown below.

Ideas I chose for layouts

By using more sell lines, I used one subsidiary image of a picture of the popular holiday destination Ibiza taken from my own experience. This conforms to other magazine conventions by using an appealing image persuades the reader in buying the magazine in order to win a competition for the prize. I chose this idea such as 'Q' magazine who offers free prizes such as CD's, one of them being 'Elbow' in March 2011 edition. 

The sell lines used are generally artists names that are featured on my cover which I have challenged the conventions of, as I felt that by having artists name's on the cover the audience get immediate reaction to who is featured in the magazine and if it will appear to their genre.

    The 'Exclusive Interview' featured as the main story on the magazine conforms to the conventions to a music magazine as I chose to use a quote from the interview on the cover, this way it attracts the reader more to want to read the story, giving them a slight insight on it.

Double Page Spread- My double page spread is focused on the main artist featured on the cover of my magazine, with a story focused on the artist.

I think my double page spread conforms to the conventions of a music magazine, as the article is based on an interview with the artist on his tour. I chose to do this as it seems very realistic and the reader can get their own perception of the artist without it being fake with his actually words spoken.

Although I decided to challenge the forms with my magazine as for the interview I used a very descriptive way of telling the story in great detail, unlike other magazine's who concentrate full yon the questions and answers told. With my article I chose to include a lot of background of the artist which I think would appeal to the reader more and make the magazine unique in it's own way. 

The article includes information on the artist 'Reece White's' history of his music career and how he started and where he is currently in his music job. By doing this it gives the target audience and Reece's fans more information on him, and ways to follow up on his career including tour dates and tickets. I also decided a sense of humour through the artist in the article that would appeal to the audience as the pull quote being on the article 'Loving it large'. This leaving the audiences interested and questioning on what is involved in the article.

For the image on the double page spread I used a similar image as on the cover, however I chose to use a closer up image of his face looking deep into the reader, indicating him interacting with the audiences, by revealing his information.  I decided to only use one image as it made the layout of the page look fully focused on the reader and simple. 

 The layout of my double page spread conforms to other music magazine's with the main image on one side of the page and the article on the other, similar to the one shown below.

I also used the same colour scheme as on the front cover to make it look more attractive and appealing and indicating that all music in the magazine is linked together.

Contents Page -  The function of a contents is allow the reader to find the information they need immediately by page numbers, sections etc.. My contents page follows this convention of a magazine as it does this also allowing the reader to access pages they want in a short period of time.

For the main image on the contents page again I used a similar one to the image on the cover, being 'Reece White', although the image is from a longer distance which I thought indicated the distance from the reader and the artist in order of them to find the information and interact with the story.

I also used the same subsidiary image used on the cover of the Ibiza scenery, reminding the audience of the chance of winning a free prize which they would immediately want to turn to.  Another image I used being a picture from a real life club which would attract the audiences as it involves their genre, also with the '5 Best Clubs' information. 

I also used a similar layout to a real magazine contents page, as the main headings being the 'BEATZ' masthead and 'Contents' are fixed to the top left hand side of the page, which the reader automatically reads from.

I focused my contents page on the ones below, concentrating on the layout and features.

 I conformed to the conventions of real magazines by using features such as 'reviews' which I have decided to use in my contents page to attract the reader.

Again I used a similar colour scheme to the page however, using a main colour of red.