Q1. Evaluation

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

Through looking at some of the biggest music magazines available such a Q, NME, and Vibe I have found the most used conventions and how these magazines have used them to make their magazines attract the audience.

For the title of the magazine I used the font Basic sans sf from photoshop, I did this as it was a large font which covered the top of the page, this is like the magazines that I have looked at, the large heading draws the attention of the reader. The heading is in red, which fits with the colour scheme of my magazine, as red is a bright colour it catches the attention of the reader and draws them in.

The colour scheme is one of the things that makes the magazine appealing to the target audience, and also to make it stand out from the crowd. Most music magazines stick to a three colour palette, this is used to make the magazine look professional and appealing to the audience, as there is mainly three colours it doesn't overwhelm the audience either, meaning that they will be attracted to the magazine. VIBE magazine stick to a three colour palette. They do this to make the magazine look simple and to not overwhelm the customer, a three colour palette of red, white and black, this is a common colour scheme when looking at music magazines. It works well as the black and red text stands out against the white background. The black and red text can be organised so that standard text is in black and the more important information for the reader is in red so that it stands out. The colours can also alternated so that it has a kind of pattern making the text look unique and simple which will again attract the reader. I chose a three colour palette of red, white, and black as it is a common colour scheme and I didn't want to make my magazine to dis-similar from the conventional music magazine.

When looking at existing magazines for inspiration I found many different conventions for the contents page. I like the kind of list set out, after looking at Q magazine I found a list layout that I liked and I decided to use that for my contents. Q had the contents down the side and the bottom of the page with a couple of images in the centre of the page. I liked this convention as it looked professional, and you could have a lot of text and several images in the centre of the page. I looked at other examples of this layout and I decided to use it I it was a convention that has been used before.

When researching for my magazine I especially looked at the magazines VIBE and Q, I did this as the magazines were of a similar genre of their magazines was a similar one to mine. I especially looked at their double page spreads, as this was the page where I wasn't too sure on what I should do to make it look professional. I looked at the conventions that these magazines used, they used an image of the artist on the left, and then the article on the right page. I used this idea to base my double page spread on, I did this so that it would look professional and stick with a common and used convention.

Looking at existing magazines of the same genre was very important to me and how I created my magazine, I looked at VIBE and Q in particularly so that I could build up a good understanding of what I needed to do for my magazine, these magazines influenced me massively when making decisions about my magazine as I could see the conventions they had used to draw in the audience.