Evaluation: Forms And Conventions

The genre of the music magazine I have created is a general music hybrid magazine which contains different genres of music with sections of pop, rap, indie and others rather than focusing on one specific genre such as metal for example. I hope this hybrid magazine will fill a gap in the market as there are very few currently. The layout for this genre of the magazine is a large image covering a high percentage of the cover, leaving room at the left and right hand sides and at the bottom of the page for cover lines and stories.

The double page spread also has one page covered with a large image whilst the other page is all an interview style article, in columns. The content of the magazine is all fairly typical with interviews, competitions, CD and album reviews and chart predictions. The language of the magazine is fairly informal but still understandable and it addresses the audience in a way in which they could relate to (as it is fairly young and uses typical words) Smash Hits and NME are all examples of this genre of music magazine although I do feel I have challenged these conventions slightly as my magazine is aimed at a slightly younger target audience and mainly females. My magazine is also much more general than the existing two examples as it contains more genres of music, whereas NME is much more focusing on one or two types.

The front cover of my magazine is very bright as i have used the colours green, blue, yellow and pink as the background and in the title. The background pattern has been made to look like a spotlight with the rays of colour coming from the top left hand corner. The date and issue price is in the top right hand corner and the bar code is in the bottom left. The image on my cover is a female model facing the readers left hand side, pulling a pose. This connotes excitement or mystery as you cannot see the models full face or her exact expression, although she appears to look cheery. She is wearing purple and white because the purple is another bright colour which goes well with the background and the white ties in with the subtext underneath the cover lines. There is an outer glow around the image.This is because i used the lasso tool and cut the background off the image so i only had the main subject but i was left with rough edges which i needed to hide. As well as this i think the outer glow looks effective as it shows the importance of the person i used. I wanted the image to look very girlie as this would attract the suitable target audience i was after. I used two black spade graphics because i thought they would show the magazine was informal and fun and i situated these inbetween cover lines to try and break them up slightly. My coverlines were down the left hand side and right hand side of the image, and also at the bottom of the page. I think they could have been bigger so that they could be read from further away. I changed the font style on some of the cover lines to add a bit of differentation, and the same was done with the font colour although i used the colours within the background and title. The cover line “free CD of the newest tracks” has an inner and outer black shadow. This was to make the text stand out more and look more defined so that it catches the readers attention.

The contents page of my magazine uses the same background style as the cover page of my magazine but uses the colours green, blue, yellow and purple instead. I kept it the same so that there was a running theme. Rather than using a list, i included photos with information underneath of what was to be expected in the magazine. This was so that the reader could see what the article was about without having to read lists. The artist titles were all in the same colour, font and style and the same applied to the text underneath and the page numbers. I did this because i thought it would look very messy and confusing if lots of different colours were used. The title is rather large in the top right hand corner and underlined. I really like this because i made the text closer together and it looks really effective how some of the letters meet others. I also think the title sticks with a fun, interesting style but is different from the masthead of the magazine which is an advantage because there needs to be some change between pages. I used some vertical text in the bottom right corner because all of it was horizontal and it would stand out more; especially as it is the editors name. At the bottom of the page i included a small list of what else was to be expected in the magazine, as i felt that the 3 images with text about them was not enough and there needed to be more to interest the reader. I wrote this list in the same font, colour and style for the same reasons as before and the reason i used the colour pink was because it was the colour i had originally used on the background of the front cover but changed to purple on the contents page. It contrasted nicely with the background it was laid upon.

The double page spread of my magazine is my favourite page because of the colour scheme used. The background of the first page uses a pink and white display similiar to the others but with less of a spotlight look, just more of an interesting pattern and the second page is plain pink. The second page however, gets covered with a large image of my female model. The model this time is facing the camera, with a slight smile on her face. She is blonde with long hair and is wearing very girlie clothes and a necklce and headband which shows she cares about her appearance. Her hand is also in a position which looks like she is touching the magazine. This shows she could be posing again and looking very glamorous. There is an outer glow around the image for the same reasons as before but i think it looks brilliant as it adds some variation to the plain pink background. There is a polaroid style photo in the top right hand corner which has been rotated slightly. The model is wearing the same clothes, just pulling a different pose. There is a yellow crown graphic below because i thought this would describe the artist as being the ‘queen of pop’ without using text. It would let the reader make up their own mind.The first page has a large, bold title using the colours yellow and blue alternately. These colours are the main colours in my interview article as the columns are yellow and the pull quote boxes are blue. The colours remind me of a circus theme as they are bright and contrasting. The questions in the interview are asked in pink and the replies are in blue. This is so that there is no confusion between who is talking. The interview is informal and uses slang. There are pull quotes written in pink on the blue boxes as this pulls the reader in by wanting to see more of the article. There is also a standfirst/kicker which is a short paragraph which gives the reader a bit more information about what the article is going to be about. The text is left jusitfied, therefore giving a ragged right edge and there are gutters between each column which make the page not look so crowded. There are page numbers in the bottom corners throughout my magazine which make the organisation easier and lets the reader flick through the magazine easily.