Evaluation Question 7

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Evaluation Question 7 from emilybritcliffe

Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Questions 4 and 5

I have chosen to pair these questions as I feel the responses would be repetitive and not dissimilar when read as consecutive posts, therefore I felt including them as one would be a better idea to make the response more detailed and coherent.

Evaluation Questions 4 and 5 from emilybritcliffe

Evaluation Question 3

Question 3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

DC Thomson & Co. website

Evaluation Question 2

Question 2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Front cover:



Contents Page:





Double Page Spread:

Evaluation Question 1

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

On my front cover of my magazine, I have mostly avoided breaking many conventions, this made the actual creation of my magazine relatively easy as the conventional products available on the market were available for reference and as a basis to being building from which allowed my magazine to fit the conventions already in place.

To begin with, a large masthead, one that filled around a sixth of the page was a convention I adhered to, I felt this was important as it allows the masthead to be easily recognisable and as I used white as the colour, I feel that the colour allows it to stand out significantly and look not only effective but look like something professional that you would see conventionally on a magazine in a store.

For the most part, across my whole magazine, I used the colours black, white, gold and red. The use of these colours across all three pages allows synergy to be created and draws the whole thing together as a product. These colours and the background of my cover image allowed the use of bold straplines and subheadings for the articles on my cover. They stand out and the use of the brighter colours in contrast to the black and white allow the coloured parts to draw the readers eye.

For my cover, one convention I challenged that is found across both the vintage and rock genres, is the use of a large amount of feature articles swarming the cover. For my cover, I have included 3 articles, this is a large conventional challenge, however, my target audience requested a clear cover for the most part and I feel that it works effectively to mark the importance of the main articles in the magazine, hence why I chose to break this convention.







Another convention I chose to manipulate was that of adding a reasonable number of puffs to the cover, the usual for the genres I chose is around 3 to 4, whereas I only included one. The colour is very bright and the circular shape draws attention to it, engaging the reader.





A convention I kept was the location of my pugs, the barcode, date, price and issue can all be found in a place that it usual of any type of magazine. I kept these features the same as I feel they work well as they are.


Two more conventions I kept were using a studio shot as my cover image and using a small banner to advertise social media accounts. I kept the main image as a studio shot as I feel the lighting is good and the background for my image, also the artist looking into camera is a code for these images that I adhered to in an attempt to address the audience and create a sense of synthetic personalisation.




Finally I kept the costume more stereotypical of the rock genre, the makeup is dark around the eyes, there is stomach on show, a racy attitude suggested by the genre, but the checkered shirt is a more modern rock image, which I included in order to link to the text where it talks about bringing rock music back.

On my contents page I have tried to include a variety of fonts, as this can commonly be seen in usually vintage magazines. In this case I have used the different fonts to represent a new part of the contents page or the articles. I have used the same colours as my front cover to tie the pages together.

On this page I have used two puffs, one circular and the other a jagged edge star, both are coloured gold to make them stand out from the page and also to ensure that the text inside easily readable.

I have again accentuated with brighter colours across the page and included a large amount of articles. A more unusual convention I decided to try was the vintage one of using lines instead of boxes to separate the sub-headings and articles. I feel that this makes a really nice geometric feel to the final piece and I am glad that I tried it, as I feel it look effective.


One large convention I broke was that of which the images were not all studio shots, that some of them were live shots and also a location shot to
break up the images being all studio shots. After researching multiple magazines myself, I thought that magazines with all studio shots looked less effective and boring in comparison to those which included other shots.

I have also conventionally included a banner along the top of the page, and the name and website address in a small box to themselves below that. These allow features to be more readable and keeping it relevant to the audience.

Finally the convention I really challenged was the one of having props in my photos. When taking an image with props, it changes the manor and the focus of the image, and I chose not to include them to keep the focus on the face and the makeup or outfits of my models.

On my DPS, there are very few conventions changed, for example, the only major one is the fact that I have used another image that is not a frontal image or a portrait shot. I chose to break this as i felt that the image worked well with the story in my DPS. The image could be interpreted by my TA as looking off into the future or looking towards the light at the end of the tunnel, and the TA feedback from the A2 media class have all said this image is the most effective shot in my pages. Aside from this, the only convention I have slightly manipulated is that of having an image for a DPS take up one side of A4, I have only used about half of the page, including the flowered borders I added to fill the space.

For the most part, I feel I have adhered to conventions, especially with the 3 pull quotes I have chosen to include. These quotes were chosen from the text as I feel that they represent the image I wanted to create for the artist, showing that Dyer can be applied in many situations as I have created a star image, not the image of a real person - even if the image I created was of someone grounded and down-to-earth.

The magazine name and website address and colour schemes have both been included on to this page, these allow synergy between the multiple pages of the magazine.

I have used mainly black and white but I used a significant amount of red to accentuate important features, like the title.

Alongside this, the black and white photo reflects the vintage genre significantly and the past and the music industry. However, having the photograph in black and white allows an effective background for the gold colour of the pull quote. The colour also brings the synergy back around and ties the page as a whole together, but also the three pages I have created.

Overall, I think I mostly adhered to conventions and where I broke them I feel as though I have used them effectively to make a good media product, but the genre's I chose made it rather easy to create the product, however I also feel that convention can limit you, as Hartley says, as it restricts the creative freedom you can have with the magazine. However, I also agree with Neale in saying that some conventions needed to be repeated in order to anchor the genre, but they can be manipulated into anything to distort and change the meaning.

My Music Magazine - Cover Final

For my final piece, I have added a sell line to my magazine under the masthead, I have used the gold colour from my contents page to create synergy and used the same font throughout. I have also added 'Cait' in a larger font, the same as that used for my sub-headings of categories in my contents page, in order to make the subject of the article clear and also to draw reader attention. I have made the font size of the article slightly smaller so it takes up less room over the top of the image, but made the word 'Exclusive' stand out more. For my price and date, I have lowered the price based on audience feedback that said it was previously too high, and also moved it to horizontal above the barcode and changed the colour back to white and I now feel it stands out more on my magazine and looks better and tidier and more professional.

I am happy with the way this looks and I feel the colours and the image work well together and the masthead is bold and easily read and overall looks very effective as a magazine cover.

MyMusic Magazine - Contents Page Final

For this final page, I have moved a few things around to fill the space more across the pages, and to generally tidy up the page. The look of the magazine now is more professional and looks finished and tidier than before.

I have also changed the image for my fashion/style section as I feel the new one shows an outfit more than the previous one, this therefore means that it relates more to the text and the heading of the section and makes the synergy of the page and the colour scheme work better together. The black and white filter on the image also creates a house style almost for my images as they are all dark images or in black and white, therefore working well together.

I am incredibly happy with the final look of my contents page, and I feel that it works well with my other pages to create a polished look and a product that I could sell to an institution.

My Music Magazine - Double Page Spread Final

This is my finished product for my Double Page Spread,since the last draft I have right aligned my remaining text column that I had not previously noticed and removed the black line from the centre of the pages, which I had included for my own benefit to show the distinction between pages. The changes were simply to make the final piece look polished and professional and I have now finished with my pages for my magazine.

I am very pleased with the final pages I have created across my entire magazine. I feel the look of them all is professional and also similar to Kerrang! a magazine of a similar genre, using this magazine as a comparison allowed me to see conventions that worked really well and allowed me to create what I feel is an effective product.

My Music Magazine - Contents Page Draft 13

With this draft, I feel I have stuck to conventions well and for this piece I have changed two fonts on the page, I feel the headings look far better in a sans serif font as opposed to the previous draft with a font style that looked more like calligraphy and I feel this font fits my genre better than the other did. I have also changed the font of the white text, this is different now to the red of the page headings and numbers, and I feel this looks sharper and makes it easier to read and better looking overall.

I have also made the magazine name and the website larger at the top of the page, partially to fill space and also partially to advertise them more to allow the branding to be carried across all of the pages. I have quite conventionally kept to using lines as borders and used them to create spaces in the columns to separate topics and features of the magazine. This is used widely in other magazine on the market, effectively in my opinion, and I therefore carried the convention across to my magazine.