Evaluation - Part 1

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

My music magazine is called BASs, which is a mainstream genre magazine for young adult who enjoys listen this type of music. My magazine follows generic conventions specified for music magazines.

The standard forms of magazines include masthead, logo, a slogan, a volume number, a date, image, and a bar code. Therefore, a bar code is a feature that appears on every magazine and I thought that I will create unique bar code with my magazine logo, especially for my music magazine. I had used the website called bar code generator, which gave me opportunity to make my magazine more stands out to the audience. Therefore, as I decided that it would be necessary in the reason that, I wanted to make my magazine as similar as it is possible to the real magazines. Also, I had done everything what I am able to make my magazine as much realistic as it is possible, by using mentioned conventions. I had researched the following conventions of other music genre magazines such as: Sheer, Q, Brando, and NME.

 

In my media products of cover page I have used a masthead, barcode, price, skyline, issue number, date-line and subtitle. All of those aspects are conventional for magazines and this is the reason why I decided to use this features. Furthermore, a hide reason of using a main feature of image, headline, and its subtitle is to gain the potential readers attention and also it acts as anchorage in attempting of persuading the potential target audience to purchasing the magazine. Although, the barcode, price, date-line and issue number work in order to inform the reader.

 

For my media product of content page, I have used a main teasers and features, as I used large headline, taking inspiration from NME magazine. Also, I had created new sections of features, departments and startrack, where I included small mastheads. Next to the logo and masthead, I had additionally included date-line and e-mail address of my magazine. Moreover, I had used different types of photos, which represents different artists in order to gain more audience attention. Alongside the photos, I had included a competition for readers. Afterwards, I had looked at existing music magazines like NME, Kerrang and I chose to do the editor letter as it is conventional for monthly basis magazine rather than for weakly like Kerrang which is using small notes from editor. Therefore, as in most of the music magazine the letters from editor are separated on different page, I have decided to do not follow it and do the editor letter on same page. In addition, I chose to put the page numbers with names of the artists on the images, to navigate the reader easily and clearly, where what is. 

For my double page spread, I have used following conventions such as: large image which is covering half of the double page spread, page number on the both of the pages to aid the reader in navigating, smaller mastheads, drop-capital letter on the beginning of article, graphic features, pull-out quote and body text. I decided to use the columns conventional for double page spread, and include the name of the photographer with additional information about my website for a reader about subscribing the product.