AS MEDIA STUDIES EVALUATIONIn 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? 

Throughout the whole of my magazine, I have tried to conform to the main conventions of a music magazine. I had been told about general conventions of a magazine by my teacher but he did not tell me too much. I had to further research using the internet and other magazines to look at.

During this time, I looked at one specific magazine that I chose called ‘we love pop’. This allowed me to get an idea of generic and specific conventions of a general magazine & specifically a music magazine. I chose this magazine as this is the genre in which I was planning for my magazine to be(pop).

These tasks helped me to understand and gave me knowledge for the conventions of music magazines and now I could apply these conventions when creating my own magazine.

Front CoverWhen creating my front cover, I took into consideration the typical layout of a music magazine and how the conventions can be displayed differently to attract the audience effectively.First of all, I used the left third rule to position my masthead, cover lines are placed around the image of the model to frame, I had made sure the main cover line is larger as this is the main story and is evident that it is about the model in the main image.

I also made sure that my main image was suitable for the cover image by using a plain background so that nothing will distract the audience from the text on the magazine and the main cover lines. I also wanted my model to be positioned in a ‘fun’ and interesting position and do this is the image I used. The barcode and price are placed at the bottom right of the page, as this is the boring but and the most boring part of the magazine. This is the part we see last due to our eyes moving across the page in a ‘Z’ formation.

Challenges and DevelopmentsMy music magazine front cover has converted the usual pop music magazine front cover due to the less information and images that are usually on them. I believe that pop magazine may be too busy to look at and therefore this is why I subverted this by using less cover lines, but still making the front cover look interesting. The main conventions of a magazine cover have been followed as I wanted my magazine to look as professional as possible and to attract the audience effectively.

Influences

Influences My magazine has been influenced by two different pop genre magazines; ‘TOP OF THE POPS’ & ‘WE<3POP’. These magazines were appropriate as they matched my genre perfectly and helped to inspire my magazine design, giving me ideas on the colours, layout and content.

We love pop inspired some of the content I have used on my magazine, such as cover line pictures with anchored text and puffs on the side of the page.

My magazine Top of the pops magazine

Influences

My magazine

Top of the Pops

Contents PageMy contents page wasn’t particularly inspired by a particular pop genre magazine as I wanted to again challenge the layout of them. For example, We love Pop magazine used many images on their contents page where as I only wanted to used a few images. There are some aspects of this contents page that I liked and wanted to try and recreate them. For example; the poster strip at the bottom of the page looked really effective and eye-catching so I used this idea but instead of having the posters all the way across I’d only have a few.

I wanted to add a note from the featured celebrity so, I did this over the rest of the poster strip. I thought that this idea was effective because it would seem a bit more personal to the audience from the featured celebrity.

In every magazine, the colour scheme is always kept flowing throughout the magazine, so it’s essential that I followed on with my colour scheme. I also used the layout of the page number and website as I thought it looked professional but also easy to recognise and read.

Double Page SpreadWe love pop magazine inspired my double page spreads too. Here are two specific magazine spreads I used to inspire my own:

The circled parts highlight the main ideas in which I was inspired by, explained on the next slide…

Double Page SpreadI wanted to use the idea of using a quote as the masthead of the double page spread, and so I did. I believe that it creates an interesting effect when reading the magazine as it makes the audience wonder who said that particular quote and why. I also liked the way the magazine used coloured shapes to enhance the text on the page and how it was used to frame the two pages, so I tried to incorporate this idea onto my own double page spread using my own colour scheme which has been continuing throughout the magazine.

I decided to put the website and page number at the bottom of each page as although this may not be needed, I believe this is a good feature to include and the inspirational magazines have the done the same thing.

I was going to use a different location for my photograph to my previous pages, but using one colour emphasises the model and the text without any distractions and this is another thing that pop magazines generally do as seen previously.