This document discusses how the author's media magazine product utilizes and challenges conventions of existing magazines. It examines several examples of magazine covers, contents pages, and double page articles. The author explains how their cover, contents page, and double page article both follow and break from conventions of layout, fonts, images and content seen in comparable rock and music magazines like Classic Rock. The purpose is to learn conventions but also create a unique product tailored to their target audience.

1. Media Magazine
Evaluation Part 1
By Mark Warren

2. Evaluation 1:In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of
existing media products?
My cover uses a similar title arrangement to this
example, it also shares the use of a quote from the
article to draw the audience in. This example also uses
a list of famous featured artists, however, it displays
them down the right hand side, instead of as a banner
as I did. I felt this would be better as it made my cover
appear less cluttered. The tagline is also offset to the
left, instead of in the centre like mine is. I used a
medium shot for the cover artist. I used 3 main fonts,
one for the vast majority of the text, which I picked
because I felt it fit the genre and was easily legible,
one for the tagline, which is a bit more informal and
stylised and the font I used for the quote from my
article, which I selected because it had connotations of
rebellion.
Before producing my magazine, I examined existing examples in order to learn about the conventions and
be a prosumer (producing and consuming content). My main style model was Classic Rock magazine, as it
covers a similar genre.

3. Other Examples of front covers I used
This example
showcases a 3
colour house
style consisting
of bright yellow,
black and white,
I used red, black
and white as I
feel red better
conveys the
rebellious nature
of the genre and
my cover artist.
I used a casual-style font, which are
conventional for the rock genre, similar
to this one for the quote from my
article.
Includes a list of famous
artists to draw in readers,
I used this convention in
my magazine.
This magazine contains reviews of live
performances, my survey response
indicated that this was an element of
music magazines which is popular, so I
included it in my magazine.
Use of
hyperbolic
language is
common for
any music
magazine
and is
another
convention I
utilised.
The barcode and price are clearly and prominently
displayed here, however, I opted to make these
smaller to save space.

4. Contents Pages
These are some examples of conventional contents pages
which share connotations with my contents page. Both
have a heavy emphasis on illustration and images to
accompany the text, usually captioned with the artist’s or
feature’s name, meaning readers can navigate to the
articles which interest them without even having to read
the full contents list. I implemented a similar system on
my contents page, however, I didn’t do this for the cover
artist and their article, I felt by defying this convention I
could promote some of the other features and articles
about smaller artists, which was something my target
audience indicated they were in favour of in my survey.
I followed the convention of giving
each article a short, snappy title and
then following that with a short, but
more detailed summary of the
content of the article so the reader
can judge whether they are
interested by it. I included a separate
part to describe the magazine’s
reviews section, which was another
aspect my target audience indicated
their interest in.

5. Double Page Articles
My double page article follows the conventional layout of having one page
dedicated to text and one dedicated to an image of the subject of the
article. My article used a conventional column structure for the text, which
is designed to save space. As my article was an interview, a traditional type
of storyline for a music magazine, I made the questions white rather than
the red of the answers, to make the article easier to negotiate. I didn’t
follow the convention of using a quote from the article as a title for the
piece, however, I had used this convention on my cover. I didn’t follow the
convention of having aspects of the article which bridge the divide
between the pages.
Both of these
examples use a
similar colour
palette to mine,
high contrast red,
black and white,
which is
conventional for
the genre.