In what
ways does your music magazine use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of existing music magazines?
In
my magazine I tried to not necessarily come up with new ideas of
things to put in/on a magazine, but to develop them, make them
better, and more attractive to the audience. This not only saves time
for me, as I dont have to try and create new things, but often I
think people don't like change, so I tried to keep the roots of the
conventional magazine. This was my front cover:
Other
magazines of this music genre for example NME have a similar style,
where they have a photo artist of band on the front cover, where the
main coverline is about whoever is in the photos. The magazine will
have its mast head across the top/top left. In my magazine I have
followed these conventions, with the mast head and main coverline. A
lot of magazines like NME however for their main image, have a long
shot. I decided to go with a mid shot of my “artist” because I
feel that it feels up a lot more of the page, and it will grab the
audiences attention better on a shelf. My mast head itself is layered
behind the head of the artist. This makes the artist stand out more
than conventional magazines. If this was a real magazine, the company
would want the mast head to stand out so people remember and want to
buy another product, as I have layered it under the artist, I decided
to make the font for the mast head itself have a drop shadow, and a
outer glow to help it stand out. Not many magazines do this for their
mastheads.
The
colours I have used across my magazine are black and white mainly,
with some greys. Besides the images. I have done this because the
black and white contrast well with each other, and it makes the text
easier to read for all potential readers and, it still looks very
professional. And because I leave the pictures in colour, they stand
out a lot more, it helps the reader see which articles he wants to
read, and it brightens up the page a bit compared to the rather plain
but classy black and white colours.
Below
is my contents page:
In
my contents page I tried to keep some of the conventions that a lot
of magazines do, where they have a masthead/contents page in the same
style at the top of the page, one main image, a smaller one, and the
list of the contents of the magazine. I also included an “every
month” which a lot of magazines do. I decided to change it up by
putting a small review in my contents page, which is a preview for
what is to come in the full review on another page. Along with a
picture about the review. I often see contents pages crammed and
crammed with pictures and text and it can be very disorientating. So
I decided to be as minimal as I could be with the contents page, by
putting less pictures, less text and less bright colours than most
music magazines on their contents page, I have instantly made my
magazine more “user friendly”. This is one of the ways I think my
magazine, has developed most modern conventions. As you see with all
media and technology now a days. Making interfaces/ media texts more
user friendly is the big development at the moment. And I wanted to
do that with my magazine.
Below
is my double page spread:
I
my double page spread I tried to stick to the normal conventions in
that the article is on one side of the page and the main image for
the article on the other side of the page. And then having my
masthead but a lot smaller, next to my page number. I have used all
the font in black as it keeps it looking professional and classy, and
easy to read, compared to magazines that have black and yellow fonts
which looks tacky. So I stuck to my black and white colour scheme. I
didn't have any white font on my double page spread as it didn't go
very well against the background, so to try and keep the white in the
page, I put a white outer glow on some of the text to help keep with
my colour scheme, and to help it look professional. Which is what I
wanted to do because you see some magazines where everything is
different colours and it just looks ridiculous. And yet again like a
I said earlier, it isn't reader friendly and I wanted to make my
magazine as reader friendly as possible. Not many magazines consider
this anymore, they just try to cram as much as they can in your face.
