EVALUATION

In what ways does your media product use forms and conventions of real media products?

For my media product I had to annotate other music magazines and follow the codes and conventions. Therefore I had to create a magazine similar to others such as Q and NME. The first thing I started with was the front cover. For the image on my front cover, to follow the codes and conventions of other magazines, I had to take a picture of the model using direct address. This meant that the singer would always be looking directly at the viewer and so would be a lot more personal than the model looking away. I then had to follow the codes and conventions for my title also, the title is always in the top left corner of the page and uses the biggest font on the page so that it stands out. The font of the title must be unique and so I had to play around with different tools to create a style that was unusual. The colours displayed on my front cover also had to relate to other music magazines, I had to choose a maximum of four colours that contrasted well and didn't clash or look tacky. This is so it isn't too overpowering and looks a lot more professional that mixing a load of random colours together. I chose purple, black, white and orange as I believe they contrast well and stand out making the magazine look attractive and eye-catching, these colours were also popular on the recent questionnaire I had given out asking indie fans what their favourite colours were and so I believe to be appropriate. To create my cover lines I also had to follow the codes and conventions as other magazines only usually use about 7 cover lines therefore I had to think of 7 to go on my front cover, the style of font and colour had to all relate to each other in a way so I used similar colours for each of them. As well as this there is always one main headline on the front cover of a music magazine, to follow the rules of other music magazines I had to make this the second biggest font on the page meaning that it would stand out and attract viewers anchoring them to buy the magazine. Another way in which I followed the codes and conventions was concerning the barcode, issue number, date and price of the magazine. The barcode must always go in the bottom right corner of a magazine as there will be an advert on the back of a magazine. The issue number and date must always be in a tiny font and lie next to the barcode and so this is where I placed mine.

I then had to create my contents page and so followed the codes and conventions of other magazines. All magazines have 3 columns and so I had to include 3 on mine, I also had to follow the forms and conventions regarding the images I included on the page. The pictures I took all related to what would be featured in the magazine and I had to put the page number that the picture related to on it. As well as this the layout of the content had to be similar to other contents pages from the likes of Q and NME, therefore I used a small font size of 9pt and an appropriate font style that fitted well with the title of the magazine. To get the colour scheme right and follow the codes and conventions I had to uses similar colours that were displayed on the front cover such as purples, oranges, black and white. This is so that the contents page goes well with the magazine and makes it look a lot more professional than going for a bunch of random colours. Another way in which I followed the codes and conventions of other magazines was through the page numbers, music magazines never have basic numbers scaling 01 up to 20+, and so I had to make it unusual by including random and different numbers throughout the column.

After this I moved on to creating my double page spread. I followed the codes and conventions of other magazines by covering the whole of the two pages with an image I had taken from my interview with the band, this was common with double page spreads and gave it an attractive look. I also had to use a drop capital as this is included in all double page spread articles. As well as this I chose a quote from the interview that was displayed underneath the title and was the second largest text so that it was eye-catching and made viewers want to read the article. The title of the article had the biggest font size and was spread over the two pages making it stand out, this also follows the codes and conventions of other magazines. The layout of the text of the interview was spread into 6 columns as this made it fit perfectly and look professional which is what I had found when looking at other double page spreads.