2. In what way does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? When creating my magazine front cover, contents and centre spread I looked at other examples of magazines to gain inspiration and to analyse the forms and conventions they use. I looked at magazines such as Q and Kerrang! However, the main magazine that I looked at was MOJO; I chose this one because it was the most relevant to the alternative rock genre that I’ve chosen for my magazine. Here is the final outcome of my magazine cover; I used similar elements from MOJO magazine : I decided to use a large bold heading, similar to MOJO. I made sure it was a distinct font with a solid colour that would stand out and be recognisable to the buyer. This is seen in most magazines. When looking at MOJO magazines I noticed that most of them have their cover line on top of the main image in the centre of the magazine. This stands out making the reader take notice at the main story in the magazine. I placed the barcode in a place that is easily visible to the reader, as it contains the date issued and the price. I also made sure that it is in a place that isn’t too busy, similar to many other magazines.
3. In what way does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? I found that most other MOJO magazines had a banner at the top. This tends to contain snappy captions and images to get the readers attention and sell other information about bands that will be in the magazine. Every magazine contains a large cover image to catch readers attention. However, a lot of MOJO covers use black and white images to give a more gritty rock ‘n’ roll feel.
4. In what way does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? When creating my contents page, I continued to research into MOJO magazine to gain inspiration to change and adapt to my magazine. I found a few MOJO contents pages contained a pull quote from one of the bands. This puts emphasis on their story and grabs the attention of the reader. The image is the main view point in the contents page, it catches the readers attention and relates to the artists article in the magazine and their pull quote. I moved my image above the text due to the layout of the image, yet it still has a similar effect.
5. In what way does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? The contents pages in MOJO tend to be very simplistic, making it easier to read and I used this simplistic layout for my contents by creating a banner which reads the date and issue number, and also has the masthead repeated in the same font and colour to continue the theme of the magazine. I made sure to make a realistic page number at the bottom of the page which is easy to read and is in the logo’s font and colour; this is similar in most magazines.
6. In what way does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? I found that in a lot of magazines I looked at there were pull quotes, I decided to use these in my centre page to attract the reader to the article. A collection of images which relates to the story in the article. I found this in a lot of magazines and it helps break up the writing to grab attention and make more interesting to read.
7. In what way does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Page number in the bottom corner, to make it easier for the reader to navigate through and it also has the magazine logo on it, to continue the theme. I found that this is common in a lot of magazines. Captions under pictures to describe where the images are, this helps break up the images and gives more information on them and the article. I found these a lot in many magazines I found.
8. How does your media product represent particular social groups? Cover image from my magazine MOJO magazine cover example
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13. How did you attract/address your audience? The colour scheme of my magazine is mostly black, red and white. These colours help relate to the rock genre and people who listen to this genre. The image is of a musician, it has been edited to black and white with a slight agustment to the contrast. This makes the image look gritty and rough, which relates to the rock genre, attracting the audience. Bold masthead which stands out to the audience Banner containing cover lines of other artists with pictures beside them, to stand out. Spacious arrangments and a plain black ground to make it look stylish and professional.
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16. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? To present the work I did throughout the project, we had to publish all our work onto a ‘blogger’ account. I have my own blog previous to this on a different website, therefore I found the idea of this very simple. However, when it came to trying to navigate around the website it was I found it slightly confusing, images would not move correctly and a lot of file types would not upload. After getting used to the website, it became very simple and useful, because it meant that I didn’t have to hand in paper copies of my work it could all be done electronically.
17. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? When looking back at my preliminary task I have found that compared to my music magazine it looks very unprofessional and very little like a magazine at all. I think that this was because when creating it I hadn’t done much research into other magazines and I hadn’t done any audience research to go from. The layout of it looks very spaced out and empty, the colour scheme doesn’t go, making it look very unprofessional and difficult to read. Since then I have learnt lots of other small things that have helped make my music magazine look more professional and more appealing to the reader, such as; fonts, colour schemes, image editing. Overall I’m very happy with the final outcome of my music magazine in comparison to my preliminary task.
