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

1) Before starting work on my music magazine I looked at different styles and conventions of music magazines before deconstructing one magazine for a front cover, a contents page and a double page spread.

Front Cover

Through researching the front covers of different styles of music magazines I found out that a strong, powerful, eye-catching image of well-known artists was needed to make a prominent statement within the front cover. With the Cheryl Cole issue of ‘Q’ magazine, it displayed the popular choice of a close-up. However, I did find a few other magazines including the Fergie issue of ‘BLENDER’ magazine and the Lana Del Rey Issue of ‘NME’ magazine where there was a use of a mid-shot of the famous artists featuring on the cover. I decided to use this mid-shot for my front cover as I believe that a powerful facial expression, if assisted with a striking pose can create a very effective and eye-catching front cover to attract the target audience of young women who idolise the atttactive artists featured on the front cover of magazine. The facial expression of the model used on my front cover is very similar to that of Rihanna’s issue of 'Billboard' magazine and Florence Welch’s issue of ‘Q’ magazine as it subtly extenuates shock and power which creates an overall dramatic look. The idea of having the model posed in such a way came from that element of surprise and power featured in her facial expression, the way in which she looks as if she is pushing against a wall with her head turned towards the camera does help towards creating the power in which big music artists have, it does extenuate the look of female strength in the front cover image that many other existing music magazines portray themselves.

The masthead of the front cover is very conventional and does follow the way a lot of other existing music magazines set out their own mastheads; centralised, taking up the width of the page and being positioned along the top of the front cover, yet still making the front cover image the focal point. The colour scheme I chose is very simple and fits in with the main colour theme of the front cover which I found nearlly all magazines make sure they carry out. My choice of the name ‘Domination’ was chosen as I felt that it represented ‘dominating the charts and the music industry’; it also represented influence and power. I found that many music magazines used a very simple name or an abbreviation such as ‘NME’ and ‘Q’ magazine; I felt that this was effective but I wanted to challenge those conventions of a music magazine with a name like 'Domination'.

The conventional layout of a music magazine generally shows the majority of the plug information being shown on the left-side third of the cover. I decided I wanted to challenge this convention by placing most of my magazine’s plug information on the unconventional right-side third of the magazine to make it stand out from other magazines. I did however, place the plug information regarding the Kings of Leon competition on the left-side third as it would be a major selling point to my target audience and I therefore felt that it should be separated from the other plug information listed on the cover. A lot of the music magazines I looked at had large and central cover lines, for example, Rihanna’s issue of ‘Billboard’magazine and Cheryl’s issue of ‘Q’ magazine and I felt that I should stick to this convention as it really makes the selling point of the magazine stand out the target audience, it is also positioned in a way that shows that the main image is related to it.
 

I used a variety of fonts as I thought that it would add to the uniqueness of the magazine as well as making it more interesting to look at, aesthetically. The majority of the music magazines I looked at appeared to have only used one or two styles of fonts on their front covers such as ‘Billboard’ and ‘Q’ magazine. Although their front covers were effective I felt that on my magazine I would add different fonts for each piece of plug information as it would appeal to my reasonably young target audience of 16-24 year old females, but it did mean that I unconventionally used a wide range of font styles and sizes. Throughout my front cover I did choose to stick with the pink and monotone colour scheme, I did research front cover colour schemes as a convention of a magazine, I found out that all the music magazines were using a small range of colours that clearly worked together, including ‘BLENDER’ magazine with the gold and light blue, and this did make the front covers appear tidier and look more professional.

Contents Page
 

I researched a selection of contents pages from different music magazines, by doing so I discovered the convention of using a simple background behind one main image of the artist or artists from the cover, featured alongside a list of contents. I decided to use this convention for my contents page as it worked effectively and the use of the same ‘singer’, followed on nicely from the cover, keeping the same theme with a slight twist which was helped with the same pink and monochrome colour scheme that was previously used on the front cover. The way in which the model is posing creates a strong heroine-type image, much like the Emeli Sandé album cover which I gained inspiration from for my contents page; it gives out the impression of power and womanly ‘domination’. Most of the music magazines I looked at appeared to have centred their contents page around the main image, which I followed through with as the only gap from writing on the page framed the ‘Singer’s’ face, making the main selling point centre of attention. The majority of the existing music magazines I looked at kept their contents page simple with a plain background making sure that the page isn’t too busy and easy to read, especially as the page is normally heavy in terms of writing, I went along with this effective convention and took inspiration of the Ciara issue of ‘Vibe’ magazine where the background goes from dark to light.I separated my list of contents into two sections and labelling them ‘Featuring inside’ and‘Fresh off the cover’ which I thought would be fresh and innovate and be a feature challenges the forms and conventions of a music magazine, as in the music magazines I researched they were labelling similar sections with the conventional tiles of ‘Features’ and ‘Cover Story’. On the contents’ page I also added ‘A letter from the editor’ which I have previously seen in a few magazines, but I failed to see in any music magazines, I therefore decided to challenge the forms and conventions of a music magazine by adding one alongside the list on contents, which I feel adds a personal touch to the magazine.

 

I made sure to chronologically list the pages and their page numbers vertically down the length of the page, a very conventional but equally effective way of listing the contents which I found in all of the contents pages I looked at; it makes it easy for the readers to read through, navigate around the page as well as making the page look neat and appropriately ordered.

I kept the ‘domination’ masthead from the front cover in the same font, position and size, the only existing magazine which displayed a similar idea was ‘Q’magazine where they incorporate their logo into the contents page header. This establishes their brand a lot more into the magazine and makes the page recognisable to the ‘Q’ Brand, this is why I decided to keep the ‘Domination’and in a way use it as their logo and make it easily associated to the ‘Domination’ brand, that is the magazine.

My magazine’s contents page is reasonably similar to that of ‘Q’ magazine in the way that the writing is laid out and structured; it is unconventional to the majority of other music magazines as the majority choose not to use as much information and maintain a very minimal look, including the Florence Welch issue of ‘MOJO’ magazine, the Ciara issue of ‘Vibe’ and the Katy Perry issue of ‘BLENDER’.