Evaluation Question Number 1

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

My music magazine has been particularly created through the guidance of the forms and conventions of real media products, a foundation to gain a realistic, professional magazine. I purposely carried out a large amount of research, to gather an accurate idea of what I was aiming for when creating my magazine in terms of the target audience, design, layout, colour schemes, fonts, and so forth.

Firstly the most important aspect of the magazine is the title. One of the vital componenets that draw the attention of the reader.

As you can visibly see I tried to relate my title to some professional magazines and use the forms and conventions of real media; this particular one being 'SPIN' magazine. Most titles; as seen in my previous research are extremely bold, simplistic fonts in order to stand out to the reader therefore, I applied this technique to my magazine title to gain the same effect on the reader in the hopes in it being successful on the market. I also used the placing of the title similarly to many magazines, by either laying the title behind the models head or in front. In this case I placed it overlapping, laying over the models head. However, I had to adjust  the style and colour of the font in order to make it to continue to be bold. However, my title does challenge the generic forms and conventions of real media products due to many titles being all capital letters. Instead I used lower case all because I wanted to emphasis the 'V' giving it that unique never seen before image I wanted; unlike any other image for it to be truly 'indieVidual'

Next, an aspect of a magazine that maks it presentable and appealing is the clothing and props used on the models that feature on the magazine. As clothing is an important part of portraying a certain genre/social target group, therefore, needs to be considered a great deal. using

I decided to use a numerous amount of props and very particular items of clothing. The main two props I used was that of a guitar for my double page spread aswell as music headphones to give it that musical element to the image. I used this particular forms and conventions from many front pages for example this NME magazine with an Indie band 'The Vaccines' however, I developed this idea and incorporated the use of the guitar into my double page spread. I also used this real media product for inspiration in terms of clothing as this group are wearing shirts, braces and ties/bow ties and so forth, I knew this was appropriate for my magazine as this is an indie band therefore, would be suitable for my magazine due to it being an indie magazine. I used similar clothing for my female model on my contents page, with a blazer and shirt, keeping the Indie style throughout.  

Another element that adds to the overall successful presentation of a real media product is that of the models, they in particular need to specifically reflect that of the genre the magazine is targeting, therefore, needs to be a careful selection in terms of their image. I chose to have two models one being male and the other female so that my magazine is unisex.

As you can see I gathered realistic and real media products and took the forms and conventions used on them and applied them to my magazine; as presented to the left is my photographed image of my male model which I then later photographed my female model to be featured on the contents page to show that unisex view of the magazine. I made entirely sure that they both had an 'Indie' image about them which is something I was conscious to address due to the genre of this magazine being so specific therefore, having to reflect it through every aspect of my magazine especially the models I used.

However, when it came to using a female indie model for my contents page I did again challenge the generic forms and conventions of real media products as it proved to be extremely difficult trying to find an image on a contents page that was centralised by a female model, most of them were male based, which could appear as sexist. This real media product to the right was the only one I could find that featured a woman, despite her face being quite covered you can still recognise it is the 'Indie Sensation' Lana Del Rey, nevertheless, I entirely focused it on my female model therefore, having that equal balance of being totally focused on the male model on the front cover and double page spread and having the female model featured in a few photographs on my contents page.

The mise-en-scene throughout all my images are fairly similar as I wanted to show continuity. However, I want to concentrate on one particular aspect of my magazine as I yet again challenged forms and conventions of using a BLACK AND WHITE SPECIAL EDITION I wanted to create a very unique piece, and something that wasn’t traditional and 'expected' of a typical music magazine, however, this proved to be very difficult as I had to find some sort of secondary resources and materials that would support my idea, and that it can in fact be achieved in the magazine institution. Nevertheless, I discovered various pieces of black and white style research, and although it is a very risky look to take, hopefully because of its uniqueness it would evidently work to its advantage in the music magazine industry.

My written content for my double page spread was kept to the basic forms and conventions of double page spreads, I used the research I found especially the one featured to the right which was an article on Lady GaGa; I interpreted those ideas into my own however, still kept it very similar of a real media product, as I particularly felt that a double page spread needs to be easily read with minimum distraction, therefore, I kept the exploration of ideas and new designs to a minimum nevertheless, made it my own and presentable as a real media product. However, in terms of my front cover and front page I also made a conscious effort to not overcomplicate the overall design, but still made it so it was informative and interesting to read. I used the generic forms and conventions in my double page spread in terms of;

• 
  Pull Quotes
• Quotes
• Differentiation between interview questions and answers
• An enlarged letter at the beginning of the paragraph
• A detailed article consisting of the artist's latest album, single and release date
• Variation of fonts and sizes

Some of these were also applied to the front cover especially the feature of quotes, aswell as the variation in fonts and font sizes to extend the creativity of the entire magazine making it interesting so the readers want to read it.

As mentioned throughout, I have clearly identified the genre I will be basing my magazine on; this being the INDIE/ALTERNATIVE. Forms and Conventions which would reveal that a music magazine would suggest this typical genre is simply by listing and mentioning numerous of artists related to that genre and that have been categorised into that name. Through my general knowledge of Indie artists and research I could name many artists that are of this genre and was sure that there were none from others. The image on the bottom right is one taken from my front cover I made sure that I inserted recent indie artists as subheadings with a minute information about them mentioned beneath, like featured in the NME image to the top right; aswell as this on my contents page to the left I inserted a whole list on the 'Band Index' of current Indie artists and what pages to refer to if they want to read about them. I used both of these ideas from the real media products however, interpreted the design of them into my own creation, nevertheless, they use real forms and conventions of areal music magazine which helps the overall appearance to look of a professional style.

The layout of all my products follow forms  and conventions of real media products, simply because I wanted my magazine to look as professional as possible therefore, by using real music magazines this would hopefully enable me to achieve this. My front cover layout is like the black and white NME image mentioned just above and same to my double page spread which is very similar to the Lady GaGa spread mentioned in my research. However, the major layout of all these pages would be that of the contents page. This particular page needs to be very uniformed and easy to follow and read due to it being a page the reader turns to when wanting to find a specific page to look up. A form and convention that many magazines use is the rule of thirds; when scaled back the page evidently has three separate columns that different information is inserted into. I applied this to my contents page as I wanted it to appear well organised and easily to view. I mainly based my contents page on this real media product in order to create the complete yet not crowded product.