This document evaluates how the author's magazine uses and develops conventions of real media products or challenges traditional forms. The author notes several ways their magazine covers, contents page, and double page spread both conform to and diverge from common magazine conventions. Their cover uses a more detailed background and enlarged central image. The contents page includes bolder text and more detailed article descriptions. The double page spread features more text spread vertically and prominent use of the color green sampled from the cover photo. The author argues these choices are appropriate given the genre and layout constraints.

1. Evaluation Q1: In what way does
your magazine
use/develop/challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
Thomas Welsh

2. Comparison GIFs
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http://gph.is/2oO7ERy

3. Cover
1. Masthead slightly covered.
2. Red, white and black colour schemes, some light blue to contrast.
3. Red, black and white selling and taglines.
4. Backgrounds that are shades of grey/toned down colours.
5. Masthead with some red to make it stand out, bold/big font.
6. There are always layer styles applied to the tet to make it stand out more.
7. Font that is a sans serif, in all caps, and bold so can be filled with colours.
Body Language:
1. All three pictures are looking directly at the camera.
2. They have a relaxed stance that isn’t posey, Indie is meant to be stylish and true to
yourself, as it it all about being independent.

4. Contents Page
Layout:
1. Black or red bar across the top, with the ‘Contents’ masthead within, the issue
number and date is also commonly in this. I included an edited version of my
masthead in this area, to fill some of the space, Q magazine also does this but their
masthead is square.
2. A medium long shot, or long shot picture of a single artist/frontman or a band as a
whole.
3. Different sections for the different content in the magazine, Editors section,
reviews section stating the reviews in the magazine.
4. Along the left is the articles featured on the cover, with page numbers and some
more detailed descriptions, these are featured here as they are the magazine sellers,
the articles that people buy the magazines for so if they are not mentioned people
will not bother to look further into the magazine for a particular article. The
articles not mentioned here are mostly smaller, filler articles.
5. Often have extra pictures along with the main picture that takes up half or two

5. Double Page Spread
1. Quote from artist taking up a lot of the page.
2. Typography, with different sizes and shapes of the words and letters.
3. The colour of the text is similar to the colours used with the picture,
green and white, a different colour is used to stand out, eg. pink.
4. Drop cap at start of paragraph or start of text.
5. Highlight on questions part, when it’s an interview, using same colour
as part of the title quotation.
6. Bolder paragraph at start of text to introduce article, usually is an extract
from the main body text.
7. Most of the page is taken up by the picture and/or by the graphic text.
8. A lot of pages feature a cut out artist, and sometimes a close-up of their face
or a bust shot, I went with this for mine and I believe it worked well.

6. Developing Forms and Conventions
1. The background of my cover is a brick wall. Which is commonly seen on magazines, especially those from genres listened
to by the working class such as Indie, Rock and Hip-Hop. However, the image i used is much more detailed than a lot of
other magazines backgrounds, I believe that my subject still stands out.
2. My cover photograph is a Medium Long Shot, other music magazines use either Close-Ups, Mid Shots, and Medium
Close-ups. The convention with music magazines is that the image needs to be eye catching from afar in a store, so the
image needs to be big. I did not make the image too small, in fact I enlarged it with editing so it takes up more of the real-
estate of the spread. I made the decision to have a Medium Long Shot because of the pose of the subject, it is much better
shown by this shot.
3. I used a box around the masthead, which is not commonly seen. Because of the genre/s of my magazine including Indie-
Rock I decided to make the masthead more rugged looking, by using the distressed effect font. This meant that it did not
stand out much compared to the background So I made the shape around it, changing the colours to red and black with
the 2nd version of my masthead.
4. I used a much bolder font on my contents page that other magazines I have seen do, this is because of the synergy between
my cover and contents page. I used the same font as on the tag lines but changed the character settings for the different
parts of the text filling the contents page.
5. Usually the text for a double page spread covers 1/4th to 1/3rd of the spread, over one a4 page of the spread, I used a small
amount more text, and spread it vertically across the spread.

7. Challenging Forms and Conventions
1. The backgrounds of the covers are usually quite light, to contrast with the image. However, because my background was a
colour picture that I cut out and turned to gray scale, it is darker than others, this makes a contrast between the colour of
the subject and background, instead of the tone of grey. I used a commonly used colour of light blue for the subject.
2. I added a second picture on my cover as an insert picture, this is usually seen on the contents page, where I also used one.
On the cover if there are extra images it does not take up much of the page at all, just a small insert at the top corner of the
page or similar. My picture takes up a lot more, I believe this can be allowed as because of the shot of the photograph there
is enough space and the shape there for it to fit over my shoulders.
3. I used a lot more text on the contents page that is seen on magazines such as Q magazine, this is because I highlighted less
stories that Q does, so I filled the space with more detailed descriptions of each story/article that I did highlight. I believe
this is not a bad decision as many contents pages are two page spreads, so have room to spread out the information more,
whereas I did not with my page layout.
4. I used a lot of green in my double page spread, this shade of green was sampled from the photograph I took, I used this
green on both the graphical quotation heading, and the highlights of the interview questions. Other magazines do not use
many different colours, usually just as highlights, as seen with the pink and grey/green text on the magazines in the gif I
created for comparison with my DPS and ones from other magazines. This works a lot more within a punk/indie-rock
settings as green is used a lot. This is not a bad decision as double page spreads need to be distinguishable from one
another, the green helps with this.