Evaluation Question 1

What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I began by researching into different music magazines and getting an understanding of how they look. NME was very influential in my research. I used other magazines such as

Kerrang to see what the other magazines were offering. I studied the pages in the magazines to get an idea of what they were like, and how the articles were presented.

When I started on Photoshop for the first time my work was very weak as

I had no experience using the application. As the weeks went on I gathered more guidance with Photoshop and began to use many different tools. The tools in which i used consisted of 'Burn Tool' 'Drop Shadow' 'Pen Tool' 'Text Wrapping' and many more.

Magazine Conventions.

Overview of Magazine Conventions.

Forms and Conventions
I believe that my magazine follows the conventions of a real music magazine, I used fonts that I thought would give the magazine a more modern feel to it, which is what now-a-days music magazines are trying to pull off. The magazines are looked at (Kerrang! & NME) had very much a lot of images and text on there contents and articles, and I really wanted to mirror this effect because I believe it looks more entertaining and eye catching. Also readers could argue they get more for there money. I challenged the forms and conventions of the current existing music magazines in my genre by making my text more modern and eventful. However it may look similar to Kerrang's font. Although this can be excepted, as my genre is basically the same as Kerrang's. Both being INDIE/ROCK. On my front cover, I included one primary image. On my contents page I included 1 image and another 2 on the double page spread, which fulfills the conventions of music magazines.

Masthead- Mise en Scene My magazine is called 'SOUND AFEX' my inspiration came from much research into why and how magazines are called what they are. Mostly Kerrang helped me in my idea of choosing the name 'SOUND AFEX'. The reason being is because Kerrang resembles the sound of a guitar. The sound of a guitar could be seen as a Sound effect. I then thought that Sound can affect people. So I started with the idea of 'Sound Affects', then I realised that people might believe I am trying to spell 'Effects' so I deliberately spelt it wrong so people the understand that I am trying to give off the idea that Sound AFEX's/affects people. So I decided to stick with the name Sound Afex. I then was inspired by the rough, shattered effect used in Kerrangs font. So I took this idea of shattering and applied it too my masthead. MY magazines masthead typography is distorted and very bold, I believe my masthead is different from other magazines as its not smooth and sophisticated like many other music magazines are.

The colours used by my masthead are conventional colours. I have used a block colour of lightish purple on the word 'SOUND.' and a dark purple on the word 'AFEX' I then reinforced its borders with a darker shade of purple outline, using a drop shadow to give it more style. I havent seen this style used conventionally whilst researching although I believe that in using it myself I have challenged the codes and conventions set by other leading magazines. The position in which my masthead is in follows the conventions of other magazines.

Music Magazine Title

As you can clearly see the Title above is the title/font I used for my Music magazine. The effects and font are so much different from my title on my school magazine. The Title 'Sound AFEX' works really well with the font BASE02 which is a font I took from dafont. The colours are different to made it stand out that little bit more. I also decided to give the font a drop shadow to make it stand out slightly.

School Magazine Title

When we began are task to create a front page of are school magazine, I had no experience on Photoshop what so ever. This is clearly shown by the title above, as its not of a high quality of my music magazine title. I used pretty much basic fonts as i had no yet discovered dafont at the time. I kept the colours the same as the school's to give it more of a house feel to it. I then added a Wilmington Grammar logo to give it more resemblence to WGSB.

Cover Lines- Mise en Scene My front page cover lines use and develop conventions set by real music magazines. I wanted to keep too the house style so I used purples blues and whites in the cover lines to keep the style more or less the same. The largest one of my cover lines is situated on the left in the middle. The reason being is because during my research I picked up on the fact that the most important articles are planted in the middle, where most people's eyes are drawn too at first. The font 'Punks not dead' is very common in my work. I believe its the best font for my genre (INDIE) and looks attractive.

Size and colour is another important convention I researched. I have a huge variety of different size fonts situated on the cover lines, the reason being is because some cover lines are more important than others. Too make the fonts more outstanding the colours play a big part in making the cover lines more eye catching. So with this in mind I made the bigger cover lines have a darker font.

Mise-en-scene/ Costumes/ Props.

The costumes that were worn in the pictures, were checkered shirts with white vests worn underneath, I got the idea of this from research into leading music magazines. To see what was worn by the musicians in Kerrang & NME because my genre of the magazine was almost the same as them. If the model was wearing too much clothing it does not work as well as models with basic casual clothing.

Layout and Colour- Mise en Scene I have used a colour theme throughout my magazine. I have used black & red in my magazine, as it seems to be common colours used by many music magazines. For my magazines background I have used light blue, and white. When designing my layout I researched other leading magazines too establish how they layed there pages out. I ended up putting the picture in the middle and placing (with thought and practice) the cover lines around the picture then like all the other magazines I put the master head at the top. I researched into where the cover lines are placed normally, although I noticed that some were placed at the very bottom of the Front cover. These was mainly 'PLUS's' or 'EXCLUSIVE's'.