Main Task: Evaluation FINAL

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

At the begging of the project I was unaware of some items and I found it difficult to use Photo shop because I had never used it before. Because I didn’t have enough knowledge of magazines I looked at different types of magazines that attracted me, this helped me to have a visual understanding of the format of a magazines, such as mast heads and the way the front cover picture were set out and how the numbers were portrayed on the contents page.

The way the pictures were taken was also a very important aspect of my magazine making. My aim was to take the pictures that I was going to use to symbolize a story and because my magazine was aimed at women and how they can overcome through different situations, my objective was to depict this in the photos that I had chosen. In addition to this while doing my research on music magazine I normally found that the pictures taken were normally medium close up shots. I chose to do a medium long shot to bring forth the message behind the magazine. The picture used is symbolic to the main story; therefore my target audience will be engaged.

To show the genre of my music magazine I used famous female celebrities that I thought could represent my magazine in a positive way, such as Beyonce and Rihanna, hence the reason why as my selling line I used world wide women, because my audience was versatile and reached out to different women,different ages and ethnicity's .

The font that I used was ‘Wide Latin’. I used this particular font because it was very bold but then still sophisticating. I also liked the way it made the ‘M’ look because I wanted a continuous look and the ‘M’ was able to symbolise this.

In order for me to attract my target audience I had to make my cover lines bold and noticeable and to do so I placed three top celebrities that my target audience would be aware of. I used white boxes and placed it behind their name so it could be visible.

In regards to my contents page, I used ideas from real music magazines and I incorporated it in my own way. Ideas such as the way the numbers were formatted and the way the pictures were laid out with the numbers placed on them and what was included in the editor’s note and how it was laid out.

While doing my research I noticed that the magazines I was researching such as ‘Vibe’ and ‘NME’ didn’t have editors note. At first I didn’t want to add it in but I released for my audience to feel attracted to the stories and the meaning of the music magazine they should have some sort of motivation, and through this I included some motivational word in my editors note.

Similar to what I had done on my contents page I also did the same with my double page spread. I used ideas from on going music magazines and the way they structured their pictures, laid out the article with the quotes, text column and the title. This gave me a brief understanding of how I wanted my double page spread to look like, this then influenced me on how I was going to take the pictures and how it will be symbolic to the main story.