Evaluation Question 1

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

After deciding that that my media product would be a music magazine, my first objective was to make a product that looked professional. After conducting some research I concluded that one of the main features of other music magazines is their cover image, therefore this was something I initially focused on. For example, Kerrang uses studio pictures which have been digitally manipulated to make them more exciting; for example when Prodigy was on the cover shoot, the floor had been edited to appear to be cracking beneath them ********** In order for my magazine to look as professional my cover image therefore needed to be as eye catching as possible. I did a variety of photo shoots with different styled artists and eventually chose the most colourful and interesting photo; I was particularly pleased with the depth of field expressed in the photo due to the foreground featuring the lead vocalist, and the guitarist more in the background.

In contrast to most cover shots which feature a studio posed portrait my shot was taken on location on a train, giving the impression that the band were on the way to a gig. I felt that an interesting environment would help in the overall interest of the shot. However, from my research from other covers I also concluded there should be an amount of dead space for text and other pictures around the focal point so when setting up my shot I made allowance for this.

Another important aspect of a good magazine is the logo; this is what makes it memorable and upholds the reputation. After some research on music magazine logos, it was evident that they were bold and not that overcomplicated. ‘Q’s logo is a prime example of this; it is just the letter Q in a white font bound within a red box. Rolling Stone and Clash are also good examples as they have chosen a font that is very memorable. When developing my logo I made sure that I followed those guidelines to create a memorable and interesting looking logo, which linked to the name of my magazine and was not overly complicated.

My next objective was to come up with a appropriate name, I noticed that most music magazine names weren’t that obvious, yet seemed to give the right impression to the reader. After conducting some market research with my target audience the top 3 names out of a potential 5 were ‘Live Feed’, ‘The Big Band Theory’ and ‘Unheard’. I then concluded that ‘The Big Band Theory’ was too long for a name so I used it as my main cover line in the end. It was then between ‘Unheard’ and ‘Live Feed’; I thought ‘Live Feed’ was a preferable name as it related more readily to new music, which was the subject of my magazine. I concluded that LIVE FEED would be a suitable title.

The second main feature of a magazine is the layout. In order for a magazine to be taken seriously it had to look professional in terms of the layout. I made a variety of draft layouts before making my magazine to make sure that the text and pictures were evenly spaced out and selected the right photographs to use in order to do this. My cover was mainly influenced by NME and KERRANG in terms of layout, because they have a similar target audience. However it differed significantly with the colour scheme and style.

The contents pages I researched such as MOJO, NME, Kerrang and Q all used a majority of pictures. I therefore used this general layout for my magazine’s contents page - but in order to make it flow I have continued the background of the main picture blended to the rest the page and layered other pictures on top. This has made it look more unique compared to other contents pages; without loosing the main element of lots of pictures.

The magazine’s content was the next to be considered, and was arguably the most important aspect to consider; If the masthead and cover lines aren’t interesting enough and appealing to my target audience then it wouldn’t sell. After some research on cover lines and teasers most successful magazines seem to not really tell the story properly but just give an interesting quote or hint. NME, for example, used the headline ‘ “No more rock opera” My Chemical Romance on their punk comeback album’. So they used a quote from the article, and a little information, but making the reader want to know about their new album. The use of capital letters gives the immediate impression of being more shocking to the reader, and more interesting. Clash used a good technique to give the reader a brief understanding of the types of bands in the magazine; on the issue I researched they listed 2 band names on the front cover that are included in the magazine ‘Biffy Clyro and Greg Wilson’. This, combined with the image Kurt Cobain for the main cover image, immediately conveys to the reader the rock style before even looking inside the magazine. I made sure that I achieved this as well by listing a variety of bands, with different genres that are included inside my magazine.

All music magazine double page spreads all seem to be mainly pictures and the text fit around this. An NME double page spread that I posted on my blog was a prime example of a catchy, interesting and easily readable double page spread. The text was small, the headlines were big and the picture takes up most of the page. The success of using a lot of images on the double page spread also became apparent in the questionnaire that I conducted. My target audience wanted lots of pictures in the magazine because this adds to the interest. Taking this into account I decided to make the ‘Crime Suspects’ image take up the whole page and fit the text around it. This made the text a bit easier to read rather than quite daunting. Another way, in which music magazines present their text is having sections of the writing in a larger font and in quotes, I was able to do this in my magazine and also make my questions in bold. This makes it a bit more interesting and also more professional. I do however think I could have thought about the layout of my text a bit better as some is covering the image and some isn’t. Maybe by editing the image so that I had more room at the bottom of the page to add text like I did on the side. Overall I feel that I did achieve my main goal, to make it look professional, as I did a lot of research from different music magazines such as Q, there layout looks effortlessly good with their simple and mature layout. My target audience is younger than Q’s so I made it a little more busy and bright.