1. Evaluation of Semble Magazine -In what ways does your media product use, develop
or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Semble magazine has adopted a majority of the existing forms and conventions of real media products as well as
challenging some.
One example would be the masthead. As you can see there is a
clear similarity between the two the mastheads .The Semble
masthead is also situated in the top left third of the cover as it is
in nearly all magazines, I found out in my research this is because
the is the part of the magazine you’ll see on a magazine rack if
the magazine is behind another so I did this also, the text and
colour also matches that of the house style of the magazine.
A convention I challenged is coverlines. Although they are in
similar form I chose to not follow the convention of having
cover lines be on the left and right thirds of the page instead I
placed them all on the bottom third of the page also only
included the bands names. I did this because I wanted a larger
amount space for my splash feature and I kept it to the bare
minimum because I feel like all those details should be in the
contents page and it will hopefully encourage the reader if they
see it in a store to buy it because they are more interested
about the contents since it hasn’t all been spoiled by the cover.
2. Evaluation of Semble Magazine -In what ways does your media product use, develop
or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Semble magazine has adopted a majority of the existing forms and conventions of real media products as well as
challenging some.
Another example of and adopted forms and conventions is a pull quote
from the magazine’s double page spread .Both quotes show the strong
attitudes of the person and interests the reader to read the magazine.
Also they are both situated on the cover in similar locations near the
splash title or close to the subject of the main image. So I have strongly
conformed with forms and conventions of pull quotes and using it gives
the reader a small glimpse into what is inside and hopefully entices
them to buy and read the magazine.
I have also used the form of having the barcode on the front cover in
the bottom right third. Using this form makes the barcode less visible
yet easy to find and doesn’t subtract from rest of the cover.
One other form I adopted strongly from other music magazines is the
medium close up/long shot as the main image. This shows the face and
style of the subject(s) of the main image. The closeness suggests a
exclusivity between the magazine and the star on the cover and if the
reader sees this they are likely to be attracted the exclusivity what the
magazine has.
3. Evaluation of Semble Magazine -In what ways does your media product use, develop
or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Semble magazine has adopted a majority of the existing forms and conventions of real media products as well as
challenging some.
A form and convention that I challenged was the colour of the main
image. Normally main images are vibrant yet semble’s cover is
desaturated. I did this because I consider semble to be a magazine that
takes its self very seriously when it comes to image and content.
Another form and convention I followed when creating semble was the
plug. I seem to have positioned the plug where it is on most music
magazines (any corner) the design doesn’t really follow much of a code
but the font size of buzz words (WIN) are large to draw the viewers
eyes to it.
A form and convention I challenged to was that the style of the double
page spread matches the house style of the magazine yet in semble the
subject of the double page spread band/ singer. I did this because I
found the convention of using the same design and colour scheme
throughout the magazine boring and since I aim towards a younger
audience I thought id challenge the convention and give the reader a
more varied design
4. Evaluation of Semble Magazine -In what ways does your media product use, develop
or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Semble magazine has adopted a majority of the existing forms and conventions of real media products as well as
challenging some.
One convention I followed very strongly is layouts of graphics on the
contents page. A small colour box with a number inside paired with a
picture and a description. I wanted to try challenge this convention but
I couldn’t think of a way to do so. I designed the picture to look like a
polaroid because semble considers itself to be quite serious and classic
so I mirrored that with this design because a polaroid camera is a
classic camera and very iconic.
Something that is changing in magazines is that, to keep up with the
times they are going digital. Semble considers itself to be a very with
the times and having a young target audience it would be silly to not
digitalise the magazine. Yet I see the importance in actual print media
since it’s a dying art. Yet there is no point in shooting myself so I've
made sure that semble has a good online presence so I set up
Facebook, twitter and Instagram pages so we can have a consent
dialogue with our fans.
