Evaluation Q1.

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

Earlier this month, I began answering a set of seven evaluation questions about my final coursework porduct, the work that went in to it, and the new skills that I have learnt during the production process. Below is my first question in video format, I transferred my ideas written down in text using different visual aides to higlight many different poits to what i was saying, and other aspects of the coursework. I used the video editing software Adobe Premier CS5 to create and edit my video.

Below is a copy of the transcript of the voice over featured in the video:

Whilst creating my magazine I tried to adhere to the typical forms and conventions of other popular music magazines that have proved them successful. I believe that my magazine successfully features many of the conventions already found in other magazines of the same indie music genre such as NME magazine.

The masthead conventionally appears at the top of my front cover, Its is bold and bright so that it stands out and it is clear what magazine it is therefore attracting current readers as well as new readers also. The font that I have used for the masthead is quite square and ‘boxy’ I chose this particular font because it helps to reflect and signify the name of the magazine: ‘Music Box.’  Similarly, NME’s Masthead  is large clear and bold, and a ‘boxy’ font so it is noticeable and eye-catching to the reader, my magazines masthead is a similar font and also at the top of the page, which is another typical convention of music magazines.

However, differently NME’s Masthead is slightly smaller that the masthead on my magazine ‘Music Box’ The reason that I decided that my masthead should be quite large, is because my magazine will be newly released in to a market filled with products of a very similar nature, I wanted the masthead to stand out from others, so that people would take notice, and be encouraged to buy it over some more established music magazines.

Both main cover images are bold and eye-catching although my image is more centred in the magazine to make sure that it is the focal point of the cover and the audiences attention, in both images the artists are staring directly at the camera so it feels as if they are making eye contact with the audience, thus attracting them to purchase the magazine.

Contrastingly, There are images on the cover of NME that contain more than one artist as well as images that relate to other articles, other than the main article of the issue. Unlike this, in Music Box, I decided to only include an image of the main star so that attention is not taken away from her story or her interview, and in order for her star power to help promote and sell the magazine.

The main sell lines promoting the cover star in both magazines  are very similar, they are both feature on the bottom left hand side of the cover and have a background in a contrasting colour to highlight the text and make it stand out and not get lost on the rest of the page. My magazine: Music Box  I have included a lot more sell lines on the cover, the reason for this being that I only used on image on the cover, but I still wanted to promote other articles featured inside the issue, however NME do not need to do this as they have other images promoting articles and already have a dedicated and established fan base who will buy the magazine when it comes out, no matter what articles/artists are included within it.

Another Similarity is that, On both magazines, a sell line has been featured in a circular ‘Button’ using  these makes the page more interesting and certain sell lines to stand out, For example: on the cover of ‘Music Box’ I have included the sell line ‘+4 FREE POSTERS’ to attract the audience who will be interested in receiving free posters of their favourite stars/bands.

My contents page adopts many of the typical conventions used in similar magazine both through the layout I have chosen to use and the type of information that can be found on it, it is actually of a very similar layout to that which can be seen in the indie rock music magazine NME. I decided that I had to divide my contents page in to sections to make it easier for the readers to find what they are looking for, these were: News, Reviews, Features and a band list (list of the bands/artists featured in the article and what page to find them on.). I have also ensured that all of my articles have sub-headings underneath of them in order to give a brief description of what the readers will find in them and what exactly the article is about if they cannot grasp that from its title. An important thing that I have also done is to make sure that the page numbers are clear and easy to read so the articles are more accessible to the readers, and it makes it extremely easy to just flick to articles of interest, instead of having to flick through the whole magazine. I do not feel that I have necessarily managed to challenge the typical aspects forms and conventions of other current music magazine contents pages because the information that I have included is more necessary than optional, and contents pages really need to have an order to them so that the magazine is accessible, I felt that with too much experimentation with different designs for the contents page, I may have run the risk of putting some readers off because they would not find it easy to navigate to the articles that they wanted to read quickly.. I have also included subscription details for the magazine which are displayed clearly at the bottom of the page as well as different ways that readers can access the magazine’s contents from sites such as Facebook or Twitter, in keeping with the zeitgeist of social media.

Here is the image of the comparison of similarities and differences between the front cover of my music magazine, and the front cover of NME magazine>>