Evaluation
In my evaluation, I am going to outline and describe in detail: the conventions I used in my magazine and why, how my media product represents certain groups, what type of media institution would distribute my magazine, who would be attracted to my product, who my demographic group is, how did I attract them to my product. Also what I found useful and learned using the technologies and software packages during the project and lastly from the pre-liminary task to the real task what have I learnt from developing my product.
For are project we were instructed to make three pages: Front Page, Contents page and Double-Page Spread. Designing these pages as well as getting ideas from other real magazines, to aid our original ideas to make our magazines look like a real magazine.
My media product challenges and develops a lot of the conventions used in professional magazines today, for example: On my Front page for my product I have chosen to use the convention where there is a big masthead, this is very commonly used and also it grabs the reader’s attention.
Also I put a dateline, issue number and website address, which are also included in a vast majority of magazines these days, especially website addresses because our country is ‘information rich’ we can access the internet via internet cafes, libraries, at home, even through other technologies provided E.G mobile phones, computers and games consoles. Also I used a barcode, a lot of the magazines also use this and it is commonly put in one of the four corners. I used the barcode to make my magazine look like a real magazine. Furthermore I used a lot of cover lines, simply to advertise what is inside my magazine and grab my reader’s attention.In addition I used another convention used by magazine ‘ FREE POSTERS INSIDE’ Freebies: pens,makeup, sweets, posters and tickets also entice people to pick up magazines also. This is used very often and attracts a lot more people to pick up magazines.
Also I analysed other magazines, to get more ideas for my product by looking at magazines in the shops and searching on the internet for magazine pages. Focusing mainly on the layout, conventions used, fonts and colours used. For my magazine I wanted a Hip-Hop look because it will appeal to my demographic group. So I wanted to get the right font which was a challenge because I needed a font which was bold, clear and graffiti-like. I tried various different mastheads, but none were bold and graffiti-like. I ended up using a font that was just bold.
The image I used was taken with a camera and it is a medium-shot, I was thinking of an image that is looking down on the reader. As I am trying to convince the reader that there is a sense of power, and influence of the person on the magazine cover, but I didn’t get an image that I liked which looked like that.
I used an image that was a mid shot because I wanted the reader to see half costume selected for the model, which is the clothes often worn today by my demographic group.
I also decided to stick with four main colours, because analysing the other magazine it hasn’t used very many colours , but there is always one colour that stands out, attractive and eye-catching. In this case I chose yellow. The other magazine has two bright colours. I decided to use not many different fonts, because looking at the other magazine they only used one or two types of font. So I used 4 different fonts. For the masthead I used Gill sans Ultra Bold, I used this font because it came closest to what I wanted for my masthead. It was big and broad, although I wanted the letters to overlap, I couldn’t find a font that was to my satisfaction, so ended up finding a font that was just bold. Also found a font which I could use for small writing. The small font is Philly Sans .I decided to use this font because I wanted a ‘graffiti- style text’, because my demographic audience is attracted to this type of font. The font for ‘EXCLUSIVE’ is called Stereofidelic I decided that this font went well with the other types of font, because it is different and stands out from the other fonts. There weren’t really any props, except for the earphones around his neck and these connote music and this is a music magazine so that is the reason why they are there. The costume was very stereotypical dress of a black young male. NVC is serious because a lot of black young males are seen as serious.
For my Contents page the same colours were used. I used a very traditional convention which is page numbers and titles for what is on what page. But I also changed the layout to make it more original and it came out high-quality. I used four fonts on my contents page, and this made it look smart, simply and tidy.The masthead font is whoa! I got this font from the website Dafont.com.This font was originally to be my masthead on the front page, but it didn’t stretch to be big and bold, as I wanted it to be. The word ‘page’ in a font called ‘nose grind demo’ which I really liked, but it didn’t work with what was going on the front page, so I decided to put it on the contents page. It also has a nice graffiti effect.
The small writing is from another font downloaded from Dafont.com, called ‘judas’. I used this font because the style was graffiti and these appeal to my demographic-group. I used Gill sans Ultra Bold because it’s thick and chunky and I only used it with certain words that I wanted to stand out. Also I used a masthead at the top of the page which is another convention in contents pages. Although I used the convention of page numbers and titles, I made each line come from the opposite direction that the previous line had come from, this is an idea developed from looking at contents page conventions.
My Double page spread I had difficulty deciding how to lay it out, because there are so many different conventions they use and all are very different, because I wanted to develop some conventions to incorporate my own ideas into the double page spread, it proved quite difficult. First of all decided to use big black columns and then add writing on them. This a convention used by magazines, articles and most of all newspapers to help the reader consume the material in ‘digestible chunks.’ But the big black boxes behind the writing didn’t make it look very professional. So I had to scrap the whole idea. But, I wanted my text to be in columns, so I decided to not have black boxes behind my writing, only have the writing in columns. I used three fonts in my double page spread; the font that I used is called Grand Stylus. This I used for the title,I really like the look of it.The writing font Gill sans Ultra Bold had to be 12 and this is because that normally in double page spreads, the writing is small, the font that I used is thick and small but it’s still legible, and that’s what counts.
Also I included the quote which was in ‘Philly Sans’ the quote came from the front cover and this is another convention used by magazines.
The image on the right is looking down on us which gives us a sense that the model is in a position of power. The pictures I selected and put at the top of the page were taken with camera and the way they are placed makes it look very good. In addition I used a convention where the first letter of the first word is very big and I used it at the beginning of the top two paragraphs. Overall, I am satisfied with my double page spread.
