Evaluation Question 5 - In What Way Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and

Conventions of Real Media Products

• When creating my magazine I wanted to ensure that It looked as similar to a real magazine as possible and I decided to do this in different ways. When creating my magazine I always had my research in mind as I knew that the magazines that I researched, eg mixmag and vibe were professionally created, so to make sure that my magazine also looked professional I ensured that I used methods that both these magazines used. To gather ideas I went to different shops around town and as well as this I browsed the internet to find a range of different magazines for my research. After finding magazines that were similar to my genre I analysed three contents pages, three front covers and three double page spreads so that I knew how to create mine.

• The previous slide showed my contents page next to one of the mixmag contents that I analysed during my research. As you can see they both look similar in a few ways, yet different enough to be unique and not just a copy of another magazine. When looking at the mixmag contents there are certain aspects that I liked and decided that I wanted to include when creating my own. Firstly you can see that the mixmag contents has a large main picture that Is in a rectangle shape, I like the style of the mixmag contents and thought that this looked professional so I decided to use of my artists in a similar style image, the difference in my image is that the background is plain white whereas the mixmag image has other people in the background. I also decided to include the free CD playlist at the bottom of the contents like the mixmag contents as it gives the reader something else to read rather than just what is going to be in the magazine. I also decided to put the title of the contents and the date in the same place as mixmag as I thought this looked really professional.

• The previous slide shows one of the vibe front covers that I have researched, I researched VIBE magazine as it is a similar genre to the magazine that I am making so I have tried to base my ideas for my front cover on the VIBE front cover. Firstly my masthead is similar to the Vibe magazine in the way that they are both simple fonts but look professional. On the vibe front cover you can also see that some of the cover lines are highlighted in a different colour than the text so that it stands out. I thought that this looked professional so as you can see on my magazine I have also done something similar so that my magazines. At the top of my magazine above my masthead I have included a list of possible artists that may be included in the magazine and this is something that Vibe also does to draw readers in. Also other aspects of the Vibe front cover that I liked and decided to use on my magazine is the position of the barcode as well as the colours. Vibe on this front covers uses white and yellow and I thought that these colours stood out so I decided to use the colour scheme of white, black and yellow. One way that my magazine challenges the conventions of real magazines is the position of the main cover line, as you can see my main cover line is in the middle of my front cover whereas the Vibe one is more on the right, this is because I think that my main cover line will look more professional in the centre due to the fact that my main image is also centred.

• Another contents page that I have looked at for research and I have used when designing my magazine is the Vibe contents. I think that the vibe contents is unique so I thought I would try to create my magazine in a similar way with changes to make it unique to my magazine. I decided to place the image in the same place as I thought that this looks professional on the vibe magazine. The main aspect of the vibe magazine that I liked and decided to create in a similar way Is that way the contents title is set out. As you can see it is split into three sections and then placed on top of each other, I thought that this was unique so you can see on my contents page that I have done the title of the contents page in a similar way however with the text highlighted to follow the house style of my magazine. Vibe also uses the word features before listing what is in the magazine and I thought that this was different from other magazines as it is in a different font from the other text on the page.

• The two slides above show my double page spread and one of the mixmag double page spreads that I have used for my research so gain ideas for my own so that I could make it look as much like a real magazine as possible. Firstly on aspect of the mixmag double page spread that I liked was the fact that one image took up the whole right page with a small bit of text as I thought this looked good. Mixmag on the left double page spread uses three columns and I decided that in my magazine double page spread I would also do the same. The mixmag double page spread however has a shape above the columns of text and although this looks good I decided to have a title so that the readers would what the text on the page would be about. On the top of the mixmag double page spread there is a rectangle shape across both pages with a colour gradient, I used a similar shape on my double page spread however I changed the colour gradient to follow the house style of my magazine.