My Media Coursework Evaluation

Charlie Thompson

Question 1- How does your magazine use, develop or challenge typical conventions of real media products of your magazine genre?

Front Cover Research• While I was researching conventions for my

magazine, I looked at covers such as this kerrang one. The conventions for a typical alternative rock magazine are clearly highlighted in ‘kerrang’ magazine covers. There is a clear, bold masthead with a consistent colour scheme which is overlapped by the main image. The main image is strong and central filling most of the cover. The main text feature shows the name of the artist spread at an angle across his torso, leaving the face clear and visible. There are hooks around the image’s head area such as ‘Hall of fame poster special’ and ‘The uk’s biggest Gig guide’ which are designed to attract the reader and encourage them to buy the magazine. At the very bottom it has a section which tells some of what else is in the magazine to further persuade the reader. The colour scheme is consistent with yellow, black, red and white. The text on these covers is usually short and sweet.

Front Cover• My magazine cover uses, develops

and challenges some of the conventions seen on other alternative rock magazines. Like the kerrang cover, mine has a clear masthead with a defined colour scheme. The main image is strong and makes eye contact with the audience. It covers most of the page and overlays the masthead. The main text title is slanted and stretches across his torso much like in the kerrang cover. My cover has hooks on it such as the ‘festival give-away’ quiz and the free poster, this will be used to attract potential readers and persuade them to read my magazine. There is a clear consistent colour scheme of Red white and black that is viewable across the page. My cover challenges typical conventions by having longer text on it, I wanted to give a slightly better picture to the reader of what they can expect inside the magazine.

Double-page spread Research

• When doing my research, I looked at Kerrang Double page spreads for my inspiration. The lay out of this kerrang DPS is having the main image on one side and the text on the other this means the fold in the middle will not cut through the picture. The large image (left) is a strong, bold image taken in black and white which gives it a good, slightly darker sense to it. They have a large quote at the top which draws attention and also gives a very small snippet of what to expect from the article. The article itself is fairly small and simple. The contrast of the bright reds and the black and white works really well and give the page good balance.

• My double page spread challenges the conventions of the kerrang DPS in a fair few ways. Firstly I went for a banner/ masthead for the page with the red and white stripes which is a running theme throughout all my pages and I actually have a clear, defined title whereas some of my research showed that some real-life media products do not do this. Also, I decided to disperse my text around my main image instead of putting the image on one side of DPS and the text on the other. I did use some of the conventions of the kerrang page such as the colour/ black and white contrast with the bright yellow back ground highlighting the black and white image, making it more eye-catching. The yellow and red also contrast, making it more bold. I developed one of the conventions by using a quote but instead of using it as a sort of title, I made it smaller and put it in the bottom corner so it didn’t take up too much space.

Double-page spread

Contents page Research

This is the style of contents page I Looked at in my research. There is lots of smaller images to go with the text. On the right is a narrow strip with sub-headings and under these are the contents of the magazine and the page numbers that they are on. At the top there is a message from the editor saying what the magazine is all about and why to buy it.

Contents page

My contents page ended up verydifferent from the ones I researched soin that sense it challenges the formsand conventions of the typical page.My page has one main, largebackground image which has reducedopacity so it does not overpower the text. I only have one smallerimage that relates to my double pagespread. I have large red page numberswhich in-keeps with my colour theme. Ialso differed from the conventions byhaving larger text that covers acrossthe page as opposed to the thin stripthat magazines such as kerrang used.