Evaluation Question 1

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

What I have produced so far, as in my front cover, contents page and double page spread I feel was a good attempt of trying challenge forms and conventions of existing music magazines, however I don't feel that I developed my work enough to be at a standard where it could be gone to bed. Though in this post I compare my final product with a various of Hip Hop magazines that inspired me and helped me to progress during this task, as well as pointing out the odd risks I took at trying to be different in order for my magazine to have a unique appeal.  

 

Front Cover



Below is my final product of my front cover, the way in which I wanted my cover to be interpreted by my audience was to straight away capture their attention to my key image. The way in which I handled this was to photograph my artist with a close up shot. This was purely done to grab the attention of my consumers. The use of the black impact font for my masthead was to draw my audience to the magazine and be able to recognise immediately the genre of my music magazine and who I was aiming my edition of the magazine to, which was to men and women who enjoy Hip Hop music, this was shown by the pink outline on the masthead and the black dominant colour for inside.

 

 

 

 Masthead 

This is the masthead for my cover 'Vybz' and for 'Vibe' magazine. During my research and production of my magazine cover 'Vibe' has been a inspiration to me and I like a lot of the elements of the magazine, especially the simplistic layout, which I find to be more acttractive to an audience then too much going on as it can confuse the reader.

I used a sans serif font because its a convention used on covers, so that the masthead stands out to the reader. The font I choose to use was Impact  because I knew it was a bold type font and would stand out on the cover.

'VIBE' magazine masthead

 

My front cover masthead

I felt it was important to have the key image over lapping on top of the masthead, which is a common aspect that I noticed during my research. I assume the reason in which editor overlap the image is to show how the audience will know the title of the magazine, therefore they can take risks and cover the masthead. I utilized this element but I restricted from covering too much of the character Y because of the fact that this is a new magazine.

Key Image

 

The key image for both magazines have an attractive looking female, they are both Hip Hop magazines and having an appealing woman on the front attracts the opposite sex to the magazine known as gaze theory. The pose in both of the magazines are appealing to the oppoosite sex as well as the same sex. I wanted my audience to perceive my artist as a stong attarctuve woman and I didn't want her to be too sexy because I want her to be for male and female consumers. I took myself slightly out of the conventional hip hop music magazine key image because most of the women on 'XXL' and 'KING' are mainly aimed at men and they are successful hip hop magazines but I wanted to branch out and make my front cover appeal to both sexes.  

My music magazine key image

'Essence' music magazine



 Strapline

 The straplines from 'The Source' & 'Vibe' helped me to understand how important distance between each strapline matters, as it inicates to the reader that there is a new story. The weight of the text, font and colour, varies according to the importance of each story.

Strapline from 'The Source'





 Lead

 

The lead is also important to be established and normally is the key image of the cover so that the readers pick up quickly who the lead will be targeted at. For example, the cover for 'VIBE' you can see 'Nicki Minaj' is Bold and in bright pink and white to stand out against the contrasting blue in the blackgorund and she also is the key image on the front cover. I used this convention in my own cover with the 'Estelle Cooper' because I wanted my audience to recognise that Estelle Cooper was the key image as she also is a new and upcoming artist in the UK.

 

Lead from a hip hop magazine

  





The lead for my music magazine 'Vybz'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Contents Page

 

Again below, is the contents which I created to be easy to navigate for my audience as well as interesting to look at. I utilzed the same pink colour that was displayed on my front cover so that the colour of this feature of magazine was consistent. The colours used for each section on the contents was to help the readers quickly see which image was relevant to each section with the same colour outline on the number.

 

Contents masthead

The masthead for 'Vibe' is similar to my one 'Vybz' because I liked to V and the layout of the contents I chose to portray on my own was different and I think more effective because instead of overlapping it is slanted in a position so that it compliments the direction of the V charcater.

The colour of the font had to be pink so it would go with the house style of the overall magazine layout, which is mainly pink in this edition. I also put effects on the 'conents' so that it wil stand out to the readers.

 

  

Conventions of hip hop magazines

 

The contents page on the left is from Hip Hop/Rap magazine 'XXL' the middle is from my Hip Hop magazine 'Vybz' and the one on the right is from 'Kerrang'.

I incorporated elements mostly from 'Kerrang' magazine because there were a lot of different images going on. Although, having multiple images on the contents page was not a convention in my genre magazine, which you can see in my research. However I wanted to use that idea so that my contents page wouldn't look limited.

The colour coded images with the story on the contents text I feel will help the readers be able to identify which story is in each catergory and the pagintaion is laid out in a way that readers will be able to understand.



 

Double Page Spread

 

The double page spread for my magazine 'Vybz' is more like an interview, whereas the on of 'Lily Allen 'is an article from the music magazine 'NME'.

Similarites are the quotes from the artists, though, 'Lily Allen's' is more a headline and the one in my magazine is just like a sub-heading. The headline for my spread is above the mug shot of the artist and in bright pink like on the cover of the magazine indictated it is the lead.

The font of the copy is in roman a serif font beacause it is a convention to have the copy inside a magazine as roman. The questions are in a different colour to the reported response, to allow the reader to recognize the difference between the question and response from the artist.

The introduction is bold so that the reader can notice it and if they are interested by the headline they will then read the introduction to get a sense of what the main body text will be about.

 

My music magazine double page spread 'Vybz'

 

Double page spread from Kerrang magazine