Q1 Evaluation

Front cover

This is my magazine front cover, after research into existing magazines of the same genre. I knew that my page would have to be organised and structured to be organised for it to be recognised as a technical equipment magazine. To stick to this convention and organised a few Photo shoot's but made sure that they were studio so all shots look professional and are of the best quality through the studio setting and rules like the rule of thirds being applied.

 As it is technical equipment I made sure that my model looked professional and confident with the instrument so it shows that she is a master of the instrument and would be able to instruct other people how to play it. My original plan was to have the model posing in a tunnel and have other versions of her photoshopped behind her. The weather played an issue with the location and we were not able to get there so i adapted to a studio shoot and was happy with how the end product looked.

I felt that by adding the different sections it makes it easier to convoy what genre the magazine is as well as who it is aimed at.  It also gave me the opportunity to add in more puff, shapes and try out different layouts for my front cover to try and convey the genre. I challenged conventions and included an article for " 50 albums you must own" to try and appeal to a larger target audience and make my magazine more appealing.



The use of the colour blue throughout the magazine was a house style which follows the conventions of most magazines . I used the same shade of blue on my front cover, contents page and DPS to tie the pages together and to give it a colour scheme. The blue I chose was from the models shirt to make her involved in the rest of the page.

Other genre conventions I stuck to was having the masthead 1/5th of the page and to have different parts of the magazine advertised on the cover to make it appealing to the target audience

Another convention i did follow was to have three colours on the front cover which were the signature shade of blue i used to create a house style, a white to provide a appealing contrast to the white and a peach like shade for the same reason. I did this as it makes the magazine look visually appealing and professional.

One theorist i had in mind while producing my front cover was Ryall who said "Genre provides a frame work" I agree with this statement as by having this in mind while I was producing my pages I know what things I would have to include to show the reader or someone picking the magazine of a rack what genre it was.

Contents 

                                                                 

On my contents page I followed the colour scheme I had  created and carried on with the shade of blue. I choose to make a feature of the blue as it appeals to both genders instead of only focusing on one. The fonts were chosen carefully to make it look professional.

I placed the ukulele in the bottom right hand corner to fill the blank space and to link it back to the magazine being a ukulele issue as well as also linking back to the double page spread advertising "Lauren Sharpe"and her ukulele's.  I focused on the ukulele issue not take over the magazine as this would beak the conventions of a music magazine.

I followed the convention of having three columns of text and large numbers. I also used a technique in not only technical equipment magazine contents pages  but all music magazine contents pages, to add a small caption about what the article is about underneath the heading. This serves the purpose of advertising what the article is about at a glance and where you can find it.



I followed the recently established convention of including social media links on the contents page as it makes the reader feel more in touch with the magazine and that they have a relationship with it as well as having a say about what they like and don't like.


I decided to arrange my page like this to try and gave it more of a unique shape and to look more visually appealing to the reader.It gives the page character and lays it out in a way that is clear to the reader where things are from a glance at any of the particular  photos.



I decided to include ticket master on my contents page as it makes it appeal to a younger target audience as they are the generation that would want to go see a band live over an older audience who would not want to. I included a section for gigs on my contents page to manipulate conventions to appeal to a younger audience.

The conventions I adhered to on my contents page are to include freebies, banners, puffs and to have group and individual shots with modern fashion and modern genre representations. I included modern fashion and genre representations as it appeals to a modern target audience who like to go out and try new things  and spend money compared to an older audience who are different.


I included a gear of the month section as that is a well established convention of the technical equipment genre and by including one it makes the genre easy to identify.

DPS

A lot of research went into existing magazines for the double page spread, the language used and displayed was decided by manipulating the typical conventions of a technical equipment magazine. The art style was also manipulated to be like the artist Andy Warhall as it was bright and retro, it managed to breath life into the page and make it appeal to a younger target audience.

The biography style was done as it gave context to the person I was writing about and made her seem like a real person who could relate to the reader as she followed her dream.


Things I feel I could of done better on the page would of been to manage my time better when creating all 3 pages and to be more organised with my ideas clearly presented and drawn out.