Lucy Clarke discusses how her media product uses and develops conventions of real music magazines. She researched various music magazines to inform her own product. On the front cover, she used techniques like the rule of thirds and included social media references, as real magazines do. For the contents page, she included a sidebar and page numbers, both common elements. Her double page spread featured an original photo shoot with a model and guitar to signify the music genre, and employed techniques like drop caps and pull quotes used in other magazines.

1. Evaluation question 1:
Lucy Clarke
In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions
of real media products?

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media
products?
Firstly, I had a look and researched into many music
magazines of the genre I wanted to base mine around and
used and developed ideas from the other magazines. This
helped me when it came to producing my own media
product in which I could work off. I also used celebrities to
give an inspired look to all my models used in the front
cover, contents page and double page spread. I based the
inspired looks off celebrities that have clear links and
represent my target audience of 11-19+ year olds.

3. Front cover
I used forms and conventions of real media products as on the front
cover, I used the rule of thirds on my front cover to structure my
magazine front cover and to help me frame it. Also I found that in
similar magazines to my own, they all had references to social
media on the front, I found this useful as my target is aimed at 11-
19+ year olds. Most teenagers use media and technology on a day
to day basis. Having a social media reference on my product would
appeal to teenagers who would use the social media. This also
makes my magazine a multi media product as there are other ways
of reading/viewing the magazine other than buying it. My layout
and structure to my front cover is similar to a music magazine of
the chart music genre, as I took into consideration the forms and
conventions of a music magazine and used things like a plug, a
header, buzz words and a continued colour scheme as well as a
large main image. I am happy with my front cover as it appeals to
my target audience and had a lot of positive feedback from friends
who fall in to my target audience category.

4. Contents page
I also looked at having a sidebar for my contents page running
down the right hand side of the page. This was because I found it
was a regular occurrence in a variety of music magazines to have a
side bar showing what is inside the magazine. This encouraged me
to do the same so I knew that I was following the forms and
conventions of a music magazine and then I knew I was on the right
track. I also had a variety of other pictures that too were articles
inside the music magazine. This made the contents page look more
busy and more detailed. Lastly, I saw most contents pages in music
magazines had page numbers which indicates what the magazine
consisted of and what page number the specific article was to help
the reader. I like seeing a natural background in the music
magazines contents page, so I kept the background the curtain of
the photo shoot and added a light pink colour to stick with the
colour scheme of pink, purple white and black, for continuity
reasons.

5. Double page spread
For my double page spread, I used a model called Esther to pose with a
guitar for my original images. This was idea an I got from other music
magazines of the genre I am basing mine on which is chart music.
Having a musical instrument on show in a magazine can signify to the
genre of the magazine is music. There fore the reader wont confuse the
magazine with a fashion/reality magazine. This came as helpful to me
as I worried about my magazine looking like a fashion magazine, so I
used a musical instrument to make the genre more obvious. I also used
a drop cap which was a commonly used thing in a double page spread
article. Also, after searching into magazines found out what a pull was
and how to make one. This was also commonly used in a double page
spread. However, the pull quote is normally seen in the middle of the
article other known as text warping. I wanted to do this, but when I
came to doing so, it wouldn’t allow me and there was something wrong
with the software which enabled me to do so. Although, I still
incorporated a pull quote into my double page spread but it had to go
on the side instead of inside the article text.