Evaluation Activity 1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real

media products? (I.E. of music magazines) Throughout the research process for this project, I had to look at various existing magazine covers, including work from previous AS Media students, and by looking at successful covers, it gives a lot of evidence of the use of conventions needed to re-create something like theirs. The main reason why their work was so successful were down to the fact that they knew exactly the type of genre they were putting across to their target market. They had in mind what type of model to use, the sort of music that will attract an audience and entice them to read what they have to say. It is most likely that a magazine will sell well if it looks aesthetically pleasing and draws their eyes in to key parts of the page that appear the most interesting. Not everyone finds this concept easy; it can be a hard task to find who you want to read your magazine, and trying to fit the main cover photo with the theme you have chosen to try and keep it as conventional as possible. There are many key tastes in certain social groups, I do believe that if an image isnt suitable or not easy to view, wont attract who you want to read it.

By following a rule of three, it will keep a balance in organising the magazine theme, and ensuring that this house style is continuous. What I thought about most when making my magazine cover, for instance, was the placement of the title, the placement of the image and the theme style/colours. I think that although maybe I did follow a conventional way of approaching this task, but I wanted to try and keeps a sense of uniqueness also, challenging the way I thought about the placement of items on the page. I had to think about colours in a way that will attract my chosen audience, which would be mainly young females, and that I chose a font style that will look and relate to the array of theme I was portraying. I took a lot of inspiration from magazines such as: Wonderland., i-D, CLASH and Interview. I think that these titles attracted my attention the most due to the fact that it was creating the sort of vibe that I wanted to create and that I enjoyed reading these magazines too, and if I myself like what I am trying to re-create, then that gives an easier way of connecting to the same nature of audience. The example magazine covers that I have looked at all have a female starring model, to which

relates to the sort of magazine I created, so it gave me a lot of visual advice on where to place an image and the way a typical model should appear. I think that these covers interest me, as a participant in my own target market (teenagers & young adults). Firstly, the title/masthead of my magazine is particularly conventional in likeness to a real magazine due to the fact that it is bold and outstanding. However, I have decided to put the text behind the centre image, not making it a centre viewing point. I have positioned it at the top of the page, centre. I have used a font called Mega Team, which was found on the site dafont.com. I think that this font choice was perfect for the type of style that I wanted to create for my magazine cover; I took that inspiration from the way that Interview Magazines logo/heading looks as though it was hand-written. I decided to put the text behind my image due to the fact that I wanted the photo that I took to be the first thing the reader looks at and this seems to be a conventional thing for other magazines that I have looked at. I wanted the colour scheme to relate to the style that I wanted to create, so I made a colour palette and decided out of a couple of examples that I had in mind at the time. As you can see, I did try out basic colours, but changed the depths to look more pastel-like, this stands out from the more conventional primary colours, to which lead me to decide on using the pastel yellow, and the standard black and white. I also thought that this colour would be perfect due to the fact that it links with my models image and persona I had set up for her during the shoots. This factor made it able to not make it stand out too much, but just enough to grab the readers attention. The Graphology of the pages is what I had struggle with, in the sense that I wanted to keep a white boarder around the edges of the pages, which meant that I had to keep the grid up on Photoshop for most of the designing process. Firstly, I drew out an initial idea on how I wanted to everything to look on paper, with the help of existing magazines, keeping it as conventional as possible. I think that during the actual making process; I made a lot of changes due to the fact that I made my first draft so simple, I didnt really think about the finer details in hand. I did a lot of test pages, and I continuously looked back at existing magazines for inspiration, which helped greatly with creating the final product.

For my front cover, I followed Elles June 2013 cover as initial inspiration, what I took out of it was the fact that the image was overlapping the title, and I was going to also follow the page layout, as seen in the draft drawing, but I wanted to keep it as simple as possible. For my contents, I followed CLASH and Wonderland. magazines, what I took out of it was initially I would follow the four-grid layout, but then I took most of the style out of CLASHs contents, I think that both ideas had a lot of influence in making this page a lot less conventional as usual and a lot more unique. I wanted to stick to my initial rule of three for each of my pages so that a house style would stay in place and that it wouldnt look any different from the cover.

(Wonderland., My own attempt and CLASH).

(My own attempt and ELLE).

(My own attempt, ELLE and ASOS).

I think that the photos that I decided to put in each of my pages played a key part in creating the image of my magazine. I didnt particularly follow a pose or photo style, however, I did have a few example images on hand during the shoots to that I had a little bit of guidance. I shot all the photos in a studio behind a clear-white screen so that it didnt look at all amateur-like. I wanted the photos to look as conventional as possible so that the theme of making the magazines look as professional as possible were in tact. I already had in mind before the process started who I wanted as a model. I think that all the photos that I took look very aesthetically pleasing due to the fact that my models hair is very vibrant and looks great when edited and that it coincidentally matches the colours scheme that I chose too. When picking clothes, I decided to keep to the black and white theme by dressing her in black dresses and keeping it as simple as possible. The only props that I used were the red rose to add a hint of colour into the mix. I didnt really challenge the extra-ordinary when deciding on the location of the shoot; I wanted it to be as simple as possible and that nothing in the background was distracting the user from looking at the main model image. I also had genre in mind when styling my model due to the fact that I am trying to create an indie/pop vibe, to which was achieved due to the fact that I did a lot of research into creating this sort of uniqueness and something that people havent seen before. The photos that I took had a varied amount of poses/shots taken, I experimented a lot with the way my model stood and how her hair looked for the shot, I was given guidance into whether her shoulders would be shown, so there was a lot decision making into photo choice. In conclusion, I think that my media project relies most of making it a unique magazine, but with a few conventional aspects. Although I did look at lot of examples for inspiration, I didnt copy them completely, to which helped me in organising the way it was going to be on the page, and creating my own ideas too. I havent made my magazine too outrageous or challenged to make it too ultra-conventional due to the fact that I didnt want to put off any potential readers and my target audience.