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

In the research stage i analysed other professional products. By doing this i noticed conventions that were used in most and even all the magazines that i analysed. One of these was that all the magazines used large mastheads at the top for the name of the magazine, usually with a motto underneith. For example, Kerrang 'life is loud'

This was used in all the magazines. In my magazine, like most metal magazines, i also used a distorted/eroding kind of font to go with the feel of the magazine. I also called it feedback because this is an effect that can be heard on the guitar a lot during metal shows etc. The magazine also gives feedback on albums etc. Therefore it had a multiple meaning.

All the covers also had an influencial band or artist on the front cover, which relates to the genre of the magazine. For metal/rock magazines the band/artist was also usually looking 'cool' with the camera looking up at the them, making them look more superior with the audience looking up at them. On mine i had a single artist from a band holding a broken T.V. This gives a sort of 'on the edge', 'what will they do next' crazy kind of feel. Which is apparent in lots of metal magazine covers. I also had the camers looking up at the artist. This shows superiority as the reader will feel like they are looking up to the artist. Which is apparent in lots of metal magazines so that the artist looks 'cool' and so that they can become the role models of readers etc.

All of the magazines i analysed also advertised what was inside.

In most cases it was advertised like this. With a column of headings and short descriptions about what will be in the magazines with interviews, album reviews, live reviews etc. Therefore i used this technique in my cover. Some magazines also use features such as 'exclusive' interviews, free postors and free cd's etc. To attract attention. I could use this on my cover as i had an exclusive interview with live love learn and i also added free postors. However the free postors in mine are not origional photography. I also saw that another convention of metal magazines was catch lines. For example in the kerrang cover above, its things like 'the worlds most dangerous bands'. I also used this is my magazine.

In the front cover i also saw that it was mainly quite large fonts. This is because there is not much text in it therefore the text could be big so that its easier to see, for example, on the shelf to grab potential readers attention. I used this convention in my magazine and tryed to keep the font large in the cover.

In the contents, i noticed straight away that the fonts had gotten smaller. This is a popular convention and was used in every magazine i analysed. This is because there is a lot of information to fit in the contents. I also had to follow this convention as i had to fit a lot in the limited space i had. All the contents i analysed were crammed with information about whats in the magazine and where it is, along with pictures of the main article('s). They all basically used this format, therefore i followed this convention in my contents. I had a picture of the exclusive interview with live love learn and i crammed in the information about the articles withtin the piece around this. I also noticed that most of the contents i analysed used the same or a similar font in title of the page (contents). For example, even if the font was not the same it would still have the 'bodge job' sort of feel. I also felt that like the cover, the contents for metal magazines were generally very busy and significantly busier than contents pages for other genres. I also found that the information about articles in the contents were kept quite breif, therefore i followed this convention. It also helped me for space and trying to fit it the information into the page.

For the double page spread, i noticed in all of the professional products there was a similar format. This was a large title (name of the band etc.), a large picture of the band/artist (taking up about 1 page) and an article with a small font (because by this point they do not need to grab the attention of the reader because they have looked up the artice and therefore are already interested). I stuck to this convention in my product and kept it to the usual format of an interview on the right and a large picture on the left. I also noticed that most of the double page spreads i analysed overlapped a little bit. Therefore i made the picture in my article overlap into the interview.

In my article i tryed to keep the colours a bit more plain. Although i still wanted it to look busy, i realised that a lot of tshirts etc. of the kind of metal/hardcore that i was trying to represent used plain black and white colours. Although i feel now that i should have added more colour, because it would not as it is now, attract the attention of potential readers.

However i wanted my product to be origional. Therefore i did try and challenge some conventions. I did this in a few aspects. With the double page spread for example, i used a simple format and colour scheme. I found that this is a typical convention of indie magazines but not metal. I found that metal magazines for the vast majority of the time, very busy and crammed. However i preffered the simple look and went for that and because its hardcore music not metal in this interview i think it works quite well. I also used much simpler colours. For example, in the cover i used black and white because i liked that simple colour look. However i still made the cover busy to attract the eye of a potential reader over other magazines of the same kind of genre. However i do not feel this worked as much as a colour cover would have and i am somewhat dissapointed with how it turned out.

This is a cover i found on google and it shows the black and white kind of look i attempted.