Evaluation Question 1

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

My music magazine use’s aspects of a ‘typical’ magazine by the use of having a title, main image and cover lines on the front page, a contents page which consists of images and listed activities, articles and stories to read and a double page spread of a chosen main person of the magazine who may have been featured on the front cover. It is set out in what I like to call a ‘traditional’ way that a music magazine is presented.


FRONT COVER

One way that my music magazine develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products is through the use of the title. The title of my music magazine 'URBAN' has an impact on the genre and style of the magazine as when I did my research on other magazines I noticed that a lot of their titles reflected the genre and content that would be included inside the magazine. The use of this helps the magazine to develop the forms of real life music magazines for example on the KERRANG music magazine has a very strong electrifying effect to it, as the font type and its colour used contributes to this effect. I took this into consideration therefore doing my research to find a perfect font style which would reflect the genre of my magazine; I found the font on dafont.com although there were many fonts that would portray the style of my magazine therefore I had to choose the one I thought was best. This compares to my Preliminary task which was to design a school magazine. The audience for this was very different as it was aimed for students and teachers of the school to read. The title 'WGSB NOW' is an instant give away to what the magazine is about as it is a pretty straight forward title. The font type was quite bubbly presented in the colour yellow which I extracted from the WGSB school badge.

The mise-en-scene of images also contributed to developing forms of real music magazines. The aim was to produce pictures that would illustrate the genre throughout the entire magazine to keep the style flowing through all pages. When taking my front cover pictures I had to consider the genre that my magazine was going to be and realised that from examples of other music magazines the picture had to be striking and attention seeking. The use of costume was also important as is many other music magazines such as VIBE the images displayed on the front show people dressed according to the style of their music. By doing this, this would attract the audience intended which are those interested in Hip Hop, R&B and pop music and if on a shelf in stores would be easy to establish in terms of what type of magazine it is. When doing my research I found out that this was common in many other music magazines to have pictures that reflect on the type of magazine it is and its content whether it be Classical, Hip Hop or Rock. An example of this would be the  image from my front cover of my music magazine. The picture reflects the genre due to the clothing the model is wearing; a blouse top which would symbolise more of a 'pop feel' contrasting with the use of sunglasses to portray the more hip hop style.


The pictures used through out the music magazine may be classed as a bit more explicit which contrasts with my preliminary task as it was aimed at a different type of audience with more formal pictures to represent achievements rather than something such as the music industry. 

My music magazine also develops conventions of real life magazines due to the coverlines. Research shows that the coverlines on the front cover has to relate to the house style of the magazine. Also the use of different sizes and colours is used to higlight main stories which are to be included in the magazine. The use of big fonts on cover lines attracts the audiences attention but the fonts used to create the cover lines or commonly the same and persistant throughout the entire front cover. Different fonts can also be used to create an effect and to seperate certain information or simply to make somthing stand out. Also good use of alignment is inportant to keep the cover lines clear and very well presented making it easier for viewers to read. Again the key to cover lines is to attract the correct audience and to give them an idea of what the magazine contains. Coverlines can also be considered to be a design element as i noticed that on most magazine front covers the colours used are consistant throughout the magazine to keep the house style flowing.






DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD

 The written content also uses and develops forms of real music magazines as the articles that I have produced within my magazine are very similar and have been shown in other music magazines. My double page spread consists of an interview of a music act about things such as debut albums and questions about them and there every day life. I managed to compose this article by looking at other examples of music magazines to see what they contained and by selecting a range of different ideas from a variety of music magazines I was able to produce a successful written piece for my double page spread. 

Here we have a perfectly good example of a double page spread. As you can see the text is formed in the structure of three columns which I had to interpret in the construction of my magazine to develop the conventions of real music magazines.






CONTENTS PAGE
Also the written content such as the contents page was also done effectively. Many music magazines that I have seen obtain an artist index which is a basic list of different artists with page numbers indicating the page they are featured on, therefore by doing something like this with my magazine helped to develop the conventions of real life magazines. Also many contents pages consisted of images which stood out showing that they are the main stories of the magazine. This was shown in many music magazines that I had looked at therefore decided that this was a key feature of a music magazine and decided to include this in the construction. Also the font types used on a variety of contents pages varied in size and style,
for example headings or subheadings may have been produced in a bigger font or a different colour to allow the audience to establish that the contents page contains more  than on category; my music magazine challenges this as I decided to also do the same with the use of black, white, red and grey to help readers establish the difference between each category and column. The written contents such as the cover lines on the front cover were very minimal yet very effective. The use of different fonts and font sizes help to allow the audience to define the difference between the main stories and music artists of the magazine than those who are considered to be less important.

Construction, Double Page Spread

To produce my double page spread I used a programme called InDesign.

InDesign is a programme great for making double page spreads as it allows you to insert different types of grids in order to help you structure your work. Before placing any items on the page I decided to add a grid. I did this by setting the page to A3 as double pages spreads are double the size of an A4 sheet, I set the layout to landscape and added 6 columns leaving 3 columns on each side of the double page spread. I then applied the layout and came out with a white page of six structured columns which would help me lay out my work.

After this I decided that the best thing to do would be to import the main image first before the text as it would be easier to move the images around rather than all the text. I found that the main image lacked brightness and contrast therefore I decided to edit the picture in photo shop. I edited it by going to 'Image', 'Adjustment' then 'Brightness and Contrast'. After applying what I though was suitable, i realised that the picture could be emphasised more if it had a bit more colour in it, furthermore adding saturation to emphasise the red lipstick and skin tone to make the whole image stand out. When this was completed and I was happy with it i saved the image as a 'PNG' which excludes the white background behind the image and 'placed' the image in InDesign by clicking 'File' then 'Place. I then placed the image on the write hand of the page in order to place the text on the left hand side.


So, the image was placed and it was time to include some design elements that would make the double page spread layout and colour scheme match the front cover and contents page. Its easy enough putting page numbers at the bottom but used this to my advantage to import similar design elements into it from my previously constructed pages therefore I decided to make border at the bottom of the page where I could include the page numbers and the website down the bottom. I did this by simply applying the colour black to the rectangle icon, created a rectangle which I would later on resize on InDesign, saved it as an image and imported it into InDesign. I also decided to extract the red and white from my contents and front cover to bring across the design elements and used this to design the page numbers which would be placed at the bottom of the page. At the end it looked like this: 

The next step I encountered was to add the title of the double page spread before adding the text as I wasn't sure if my positioning would be exact as my flat plan was not accurate. The article that I wrote for the double page spread was based on an interview, therefore keeping it plain and simple I simply called it 'Exclusive Interview' which was also one of the cover lines on the front cover. The font used was extracted from the front cover in order to keep the design elements consistent and I also decided to add a red underline underneath the double page spread title to separate it from the text.

Finally, it was time to insert the text onto my page. I must admit it was very easy to do. InDesign is really good for projects such as this and producing magazines as when including text, if all the text doesnt fit in one collumn it allows you to bring the text over and insert it into another collumn. You are also able to copy and paste what you have previously typed up for example i typed up my article on microsoft word and it would have been a very long process having to type up the article again word for word. This is why InDesign is very handy. I had to decide whether the introduction of the article was best places going across all three collumns or to start it off in one collumn and maybe make it bold or italic to stand out but from my research many magazine article introductions mostly go across the collumns. I inserted the text making the questions red and bold so that it stood out from the rest of the content to prevent confusion from the questions and the answers. I used 'tahoma' which is a very casual font in order to prevent difficulty in reading the article.
As you can see from the previous screen grab, I created a transparent 'E' as part of the background to contribute to the house style and also has connections to the name of the so called artist that I have used to be the topic of my article. I did this my typing the letter in 'Times New Roman' resizing it and then clicking on object, effects and transparency. I then experimented with the capacity of it to make sure that the transparency of it didnt effect the ablity for people to read it.

As there wasn't enough space on my double page spread to include everything that I wanted to put, I decided to create an extra page to continue the article from my double page spread. Above we have the title of the extra page that I created 'EL MANYERA

Text was added in the same way as the first double page spread by copying and pasting the content of the text from microsoft word and inserting it on the page again editing the text with the use of red and black to separate the questions from the answers as my article is based on an interview.


This leads us to how I inserted the images displayed on the page.

I chose one of the possible images I took to use for my double page spread and realised that I didn't like the shape of the image as it was a traditional portrait take photo and noticed that if the image is going t be placed in between text, the sharp edges of the picture may make it look out of place or unprofessional.






To resolve this I came up with the idea to make the image circle instead of rectangle. I was unsure how to do this therefore I went on youtube to find tutorials that would help me. This is where I was introduced to the Elliptical Marquee Tool. Similar to the crop tool I used this tool to crop the shape of a circle around the image.

After this, It was finally time to insert it into my article, but it came to mind that I could bring specific design elements from my contents page and front cover page to keep the consistancy of the house style therefore I decided to use the drop shaddow tool. I then decided that the image was ready to be put into the double page spread in which I went on to InDesign, File, Place and selected the image that I edited. 

I used text wrap to allow the text of the article to work its way around the image rather than having text flowing through or beneath the image. I done this by going on text wrap, and choosing the type of text wrap and what part of the image to wrap which was both right and left sides and detecting the edges.

Here I did something similar but with text instead. The text that I wanted to include was used as a pull quote which is a quote taken from the article which may be classified as a significant quote and enlarging it and changing the style to make it stand out. The text type that wanted the pull quote to be was not included in the InDesign programme therefore I typed it up in Photoshop. In order to import the text into Indesign I saved the text as a JPEG making it an image and placed it the same way that I placed the first image.


This was the final aspect of my extra double page spread.

Peer Assessment, Double Page Spread

Above I have chosen to do my peer assessment of my music magazine at its finishing stages in which I used well known social networks such as facebook to collect feedback on peoples views on the double page spread of my music magazine.

From this activity, I was able to collect a decent amount of comments all with very different views and tips on what they thought about my double page spread. On person mentioned how they thought the spread was very colour coordinates and that the image used was a clear representation of the genre of my magazine. I assumed they meant due to the posture, expression, direction of gaze and costume was what conveyed this. Another person also mentioned how the image was good but looked pixilated around the edges, in which I told them that due to the file being too big for facebook this caused the image to look undefined. Two other people mentioned how they liked the transpearent 'E' in the background of the text, in which I agreed as I thought this was one of the best aspects of my double page spread although the spelling within the actual content of the double page spread was said to need to be corrected and the way in which I phrases certain sentences.They also said that it's good that I have have followed all the conventions of a magazine, such as, page numbers, structure of paragraphs, website, ect.

Planning, Double Page Spread

Above is a flat plan of what is going to be my double page spread. I do apologise if the image isn't clear but im here to talk it through.

As I have researched many different double page spreads, they all consist of some sort of heading, therefore I have decided to call mine 'Exclusive Interview'. You may be wondering why I haven't included the actual artists name to you, but you will soon understand when i've revealed the design technique to emphasise this.
The heading will be composed in an Italic style font and will be black. This will then be followed by the introduction as the format of writting for the double page spread is in the style of an Interview. I have decided that the introduction should be in a different style of italics, which is easy to read and should be top, central of the left hand side of the page. One of the give aways of the artists being interviewed is strictly exposed in the interview, but this is not all that will give it away.

Next we have the content of the page which will be displayed in three collumns (as shown on the flat pan with lines) in which the actual interview will be put here. The questions asked will be bold, red and the questions answered will be in black. Here is where I bring you to the reason why I have decided not to include the name of the artists in the heading, this is because in the background of the contents I have decided to include a grey transparent 'E' along with a full blown image on the entire right hand side of the page. My model is designed to be someone of a high status and very well known, therefore the audience would or should be able to establish who the interview is about.

At the bottom of the page will be a black border and the two ends of the boarder will fade to red so that the text page numbers can be displayed in white along with the website of the magazine displayed on the border also.

Research, Double Page Spread

Before constructing my double page spread, I decided to do some research on double page spreads from well known magazines to find out the elements it consists of and how thee aspects may attract the target audience.

 

Above we have a double page spread from 'Q' magazine, a magazine known by many with a good reputation within the media. As shown, we can see a image of well known pop artist 'Lady Gaga' which takes up half of the double page spread. By displaying an image of a well known person who often many people may have interest in, is more likely to attract the target audience as it is very eye catching and appealing to the audience of the magazine. People are usually attracted to images and they are also the first aspect that a reader is likely to notice therefore by having a good quality, well taken picture, almost tells the story of the double page spread article instantly meaning that people are able to immediatly decide whether the article on the double page spread is some what of their interest or not. Also the image is in black and white which contributes to the house style of the entire 'Q' magazine in which the contrast of the image makes the image stand out even more. This is one of the reasons why images on double page spreads are so important as they are usually used in connection with what or who the text displayed on the page is about and is an instand appeal to its audience.

As well as the image being a dominant factor of the page, there are other design elements which contributes this in aid of catching the audiences attention. On the right hand side of the magazine we witness a red transparent letter displayed in the background of the written text. This is an element that would engage and attract the audience as its significance allows readers to want to stay on the page and read on. There is also use of a drops cap which would also portray the importance of a new topic being talked about within the article which allows readers to skip to specific parts and paragraphs within the article. These elements allow the readers to be in control of what they are and want to read leaving the audience the option whether they want to read the entire double page spread article, some of it, or simply flick through the pictures. The way in which the text is laid out is in columns which is used to help prevent confusion of where to start and where to finish reading. The use of columns also creates structure and organisation for the double page spread as the way in which the page is displayed has an effect on whether the page is appealing to the reader or not.