The document summarizes how the student's magazine uses and challenges conventions of real music magazines. Key points: 1. The magazine cover uses a detailed brick wall background and medium long shot of the subject, challenging conventions of lighter backgrounds and closer shots. 2. The contents page uses bolder typography and more detailed article descriptions than other magazines. 3. The double page spread uses more text and multiple colors like green, challenging conventions of less text and primarily one color for highlights.

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

2. Comparison GIFs (May not work when uploaded to SlideShare)
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https://media.giphy.com/media/Tb
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http://gph.is/2oO7ERy

3. Cover1. 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 text 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 pose-like, Indie is meant to be stylish and
true to yourself, as it it all about being independent.
3. Denim jackets and knitted type coats.
Layout:
1. Rip effect on part of magazine, main selling line and extra info on it, slightly angled across middle of magazine.
2. Tag line on top or bottom of magazine, with band names or ‘exclusive interview’ etc.
3. Tag lines listed on sides of magazine, filling negative space.
4. Single person on magazine, mid shots and medium close-ups are common.

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 thirds of
the screen spread.
6. Mainly white backgrounds, less colourful than the cover as the focus is now more on
readability of the text not it being eye catching.

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.