Evaluation - Question One.

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

Print is a form of media and my task was to create a front cover, contents page and a double page spread for a music magazine, magazines are only one type of print media and after doing research into rock magazines and comparing generic conventions I was able to find similarities between magazines to base my layout and ideas around.

When researching front covers for my rock music magazine I started by doing mood boards of front covers I had found and then analysed them so that I gained wider knowledge into the common layout and what features came up in most magazines, by doing this I managed to gain an insight of what occurred most on a front cover, most magazines usually had one striking image which took up all of the front cover, this shot was normally in colour and was a mid shot of a artist or band. Due to the photo being such a prominent piece is was clear that this was what attracted the target audience to the magazine, I then followed this layout as I think it gave a good effect to the magazine and gave it a professional look. The logo of the magazine or the name was also very prominent and often found in the top left hand corner of the front cover, as this occurred in many magazines, I decided to use this and develop and create my own logo for my magazine ‘Volume’ which I could then place in the top left hand corner and also on my contents and double page spread. For this I stuck to my colour scheme which I had already selected, of black, white and red. I created a red box which had white font in it which said Volume, the size of the ‘V’ was enhanced to draw attention to the name of the magazine. The writing of the magazine was placed over the initial photo of the artist, I kept the writing black separated by red lines which I think gave the front cover a simple and professional look, and which I found most effective when researched magazine covers myself, I then added extras to the front cover including a bar code in the bottom right hand corner which I also found was most common.


When doing my double page spread, I found it was most common to have a list style layout on the page which included a main title and a little comment underneath which stated what would be included in each article, the page numbers were also placed next to the articles in the same style of the logo; red box and white writing, this highlighted the most intriguing articles which I thought would catch the audiences eye, I found that in many conventions of the rock magazines there was a main image which was bigger than all the rest which was made clear that it was the main focus in the magazine, there was normally a maximum of about 5 photos, one being the most prominent and others made smaller and placed around the larger photo, all photos also have a page number in the same style of the list. I also found it was common for there to be a footer at the bottom of the contents page which included the logo I had created, the page number, and the date. It also included a website which you can subscribe to the magazine. These were the generic conventions I followed when thinking about the layout of my contents page.


When doing research into double page spreads in rock magazines a generic convention which was made clear in most and one which I followed was that one the left hand page of the spread had the main image on it whereas  the text was found on the right hand side, the name of the band or artist was made very prominent on the top of the right hand page so the audience knows instantly what the article entails, I developed this idea as I also wanted to make the artists name/band bold and eye catching, I then also found that many magazines followed a column layout which I also chose to replicate I chose to do 3 columns, and a question and answer style article as I feel this that a better effect of the audience as it allows you to gain a real understanding of the artist. Again I stuck to the theme of red, white and black, and also added the same footer found on the contents page, which allows the magazine to flow as they can see similarities between pages.