Final Evaluation

My music magazine has used the conventions of a real magazine, such as a masthead, a main image, several cover lines, a barcode and a date which indicates when the magazine was published. I have also consistently used the same font and font colour throughout the front cover and contents page. However, my music magazine has also challenged the conventions of an actual music magazine as usually the background would be one, single, block colour, whereas mine is a blue-ish colour which was the actual background of my photograph for my main image.
My contents page follows the conventions of a real magazine, it shows the features and where they can be found. But it also shows the regular features of my magazine and also where they can be found. I have put a small image that relates to the main feature of my magazine on the contents page also.

My double page spread also follows the conventions of a real magazine, it features a large image of the subject of the feature and then also a text box which contains the actual feature. The title is in a bigger text than the rest of the text on the page and the questions in the interview are larger than the answers.
The brief for this product was to use an image manipulation programme, I have used both Photoshop and Microsoft publisher to do this.

My music magazine represents young people as being friendly and helpful, this is shown in my main feature as the person who is interviewed is happy to help the world and even says they are playing a concert to aid climate change. This is a contrast to how young people are often represented today, as they can be represented in a negative fashion quite often. I also feel that my music magazine represents young people as being polite and not rude and loud as young people are often seen to be.

The institution would be Sound, it could be part of a larger company or could work independently. Larger companies produce lots of different types of media, such as television programmes, radio programmes and magazines. Whereas smaller companies may only produce one type of media but be more focused on the contents of it and would probably not have that much funding put into it so it wouldn’t look as good as some magazines which have more funding. If it was part of a larger company the magazine would benefit from a larger audience and would have more funding put into it’s production, which would mean it would have more advertising and would possibly feature more famous people.

The audience for my music magazine would be young people, this is made obvious by the lack of text on the front cover and in the double page spread as young people don’t want to waste time reading a large amount of text. Also the language used throughout my media product is simple and informal as this appeals more to a young audience. The audience would also probably be female, as the model on the main image is female and seems to be quite fashionable. The text used on my front page is also quite feminine, this would also appeal to a female audience.

Throughout the process of producing my media product, I have learnt how to use Photoshop to correctly edit photos and add text to pages. I also learnt how to produce a page that is the size of two a4 pages together for my double page spread. I also learned how to use Microsoft Publisher to a higher standard to make my contents and front pages. I also learnt how to use a camera to take better quality photos for my media product and then edited them using Photoshop.

For my preliminary task, I produced a front page and a contents page for a new college magazine. Looking back at this, the main image for my front page looks very simple and the image isn’t a very good quality and seems too busy to be on a front page. As part of my final product the image is simpler, a higher quality and bolder as it has a plain background and features a close-up of the model. The font used for the masthead in my preliminary task looks unclear and messy, whereas the font I have used in my final product is simple and clear. Also because of the simpler background, the text is easier to read. Also the barcode I have used looks more realistic and I have also put a date of publication on, which also makes it look more realistic. The contents page I produced as part of my preliminary task was just a mock-up and didn’t contain any actual features, whereas the contents page I have produced for my final piece contains actual information and images.

Double Page Spread