Evaluation Activity 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of music magazines)

The title of my magazine ‘Radar’ is quite suitable to the indie genre. The example of New Musical Express (NME) is similar sort of title in a way. Radar represents looking for something new, and so this indicates that the magazine is interested in new music. I feel that indie is an example of a genre that is always changing and new artists help change people’s perception of ‘indie’ and my magazine could be used as a way of promoting new artists as many magazines of this type are. 

My front page is set out in a fairly simple manner, the main image takes up about a third of the page as it is a full body shot as apposed to a mid shot or close up which would take up a lot more of the page. This resulted in a lot of blank white space, so I did have to put more cover lines in than i originally planned to. My drafts are good examples of how the magazine doesn’t look quite right with less cover lines, I feel the final cover has enough content to fill the page but not so much that it looks overcrowded. My contents page is set out in a more complicated and condensed manner, although I fell that it is still easy to understand and read. I have made a simple list of the features included and images of the main stories in the magazine. The double page spread is set out in quite a formal style, this arguably goes against the normal conventions of the genre where the layout can be fairly messy and a bit unconnected in places like this example from NME.

A convention I have used is having the main image on one page and article on the opposite. The example also uses some smaller images in the article which is a convention that I haven’t followed as I feel the page may have become overcrowded. This challenges the crowded nature of this genres and goes along with my idea of a simplistic style to my magazine. The model used has a fairly serious but neutral facial expression, this is due to the timid nature I imagine the artist to have. His outfit of buttoned-up shirt and skinny black jeans is suited to the indie genre. My photos contain a wide range of different shots, but I felt the full bod shot was the way to go. It does allow more space for cover lines and in a way makes the image of the artist a bit more iconic and allows the audience to see the artist in full. The images used in the contents are more ‘in action’ shots and include a caption involving what the feature is about. 

The font for my masthead is ‘Headline One’ which I have also used for the page numbers on the contents page. The main font I have used is ‘Myriad Pro’ which is a simple but professional looking font. The style I wanted to get with theses fonts was again simplistic and these fonts do work well. The colour schemes in the cover, contents and double page spread all follow a fairly basic three-colour scheme. The front cover is black/red/white - these colours work quite well together and the red used makes the masthead and coverlines stick out a bit more. The contents page is a mixture of grey, black and white which makes it seem a bit more simplistic. The double page spread has a similar scheme to the cover with black, white and the one contrasting colour - green. Indie magazines can have a very untidy colour scheme and make the covers themselves look again overcrowded. This is an example of this:

The aim I personally had was to make the magazine look as ‘real’ as possible. I tried to use many features to make it seem as professional as possible. The artist on the front therefore had to be represented in a way so he looked like a professional artist and suit the genre. His blank expression indicates a from of arrogance but is also quite neutral but the hint of arrogance is almost typical of some indie artists. Magazines of the Indie genre are usually quite cluttered and potentially overcrowded in most cases, so I feel my magazine challenges these traditions in this way.