Evaluation Activity 1

   In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop, or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

Other magazines that I looked at that are of a similar genre to my own magazine were The Source and Vibe. The genre of these magazines were important in the making of my magazine as they inspired me to create my own R&B/hip-hop magazine, which appeals to my target niche audience of 16-28 year olds who are interested in the R&B/hip-hop genre. But most of my inspiration was taken from The Source magazine, especially when designing the front cover of my own magazine (such as the positioning of the cover lines). I took certain ideas and adapted them slightly, as well as challenging some of the conventions from the front cover image below.

I tried to use an aspect of the airbrush technique, which is a convention that most magazines use, on the images of my model to smooth out the texture of the skin and make the skin’s surface look more even. First of all, I used the ‘Spot Healing Brush Tool’ in Adobe Photoshop to get rid of any blemishes to give my images a smooth finish. Next, I altered the brightness and contrast to make my images look clearer and sharper, and altered the hue and saturation so that each of the images look similar in colour tone by going on the ‘Image’ tab and onto ‘Adjustments’. Moreover, I feathered the images to around 3 pixels by first of all using the magnetic lasso tool to cut out the images and then going onto the ‘Select’ tab and clicking on ‘Modify’, which brought up the option of feathering. A smooth outline was achieved by doing this. The editing of my images has allowed my magazine to follow the essential convention of having professional-looking images with a 3D effect.  

In addition, I followed the convention of having my model positioned in the middle third of the cover, making good use of space at the same time by using a mid shot. Likewise, a mid shot is used on the double-page spread to achieve this as well. Mid shots allow the mise-en-scene (particularly the model’s costume) to reflect the magazine genre effectively. The classic convention of having the image of the model positioned in front of the masthead on the front cover is used too. This highlights the artist’s importance of being the main feature of the magazine. I decided to reinforce this idea by incorporating a single long shot of the music artist on the contents page, which still follows conventions of most R&B/hip-hop magazines. I wanted to retain these particular conventions in my own magazine because the camera is directly focused on the model. For that reason, the audience's attention will be immediately attracted to him as he is part of the USP (unique selling point). Therefore, the audience will be able to recognise the kinds of connotations the model is reflecting through the types of poses he is doing. The poses represent the R&B/hip-hop genre well as my model is posing with superiority, class, and a strong demeanour.  

Furthermore, the title of my magazine - YOLO - is an acronym for ‘You Only Live Once,’ which was inspired from a song by Drake (featuring Lil Wayne) called 'The Motto' (this song represents the type of music my magazine is focused on). I think this is an ideal name for a hip-hop/R&B magazine as a lot of singers/rappers live up to the acronym - it sums up how they live their lives to the fullest. I thought that using an acronym for the magazine name allows my magazine to follow the convention of having a short, catchy name that consumers can easily remember; most magazines usually use one word for their magazine name (e.g. Vibe, XXL).  

Instead of having the masthead in a plain font, to develop this convention of other magazines I decided to add effects to the masthead on my magazine. To make the gold-coloured masthead stand out and look as if it’s sparkling, I distorted the pixels by going onto the ‘Filter’ tab and added a diffused glow by altering the graininess, glow amount, and clear amount suitably to get my desired effect. Also, I added a purple-coloured stroke around the masthead to make it look eye-catching by right-clicking on the layer and going onto ‘Blending Options’ and making sure that the ‘Stroke’ box is ticked. To change the colour of the stroke to purple I clicked on the colour box which brought up the ‘Color Picker’ tool and entered the correct HTML code (which is from this website: http://www.computerhope.com/htmcolor.htm) for the type of purple (#8E35EF) I wanted into the colour code box. I made sure that the stroke is located around the outside of the text as well and modified the width of the stroke, giving the text a thick outline. However, I still imitated the convention of having the masthead covering the whole of the top third of the front cover, so I followed the convention of sticking to the rule of thirds.

Also, the contents page adheres to the simple convention of most R&B/hip-hop magazines by having the name of the articles down one side of the page in one column, and one central image of the music artist featured within the magazine. Similarly, the double-page spread adopts the common convention of having the text on one half of the spread and an image covering the other. I chose to stick to these conventions as I didn’t want to make the pages look cluttered with too much text and images. What's more, I believe that a simple, clean look is most effective in order to prevent putting readers off from purchasing and looking at the magazine.

                   

The article on the double-page spread consists of a series of questions and answers centred on the main music artist who is the feature of the magazine - several music magazines use this form. I decided to incorporate an interview of the main music artist as I believe readers will be most interested in reading it because the questions get straight to the point of what the magazine is trying to find out about the artist. A drop cap, another convention that some magazines use, has been included at the beginning of the article to attract readers’ attention. However, this convention has been developed further by adding a diffused glow to distort the pixels to portray a sparkle effect. Also, a drop shadow (distance and size of shadow set to 5 pixels and opacity set to 75%), and an inner bevel and emboss with contour was added. This was achieved by right-clicking on the layer and going onto ‘Blending Options’ where the different styles could be selected. Moreover, a pull-quote, which has an outer bevel and emboss with a drop shadow, has been used to draw readers in. It challenges conventions of other magazines as it has been positioned on the artist’s t-shirt; most magazines place it elsewhere to fill up white space. I chose to challenge this convention because I think that placing it on the artist’s t-shirt specifically emphasises his words. Also, the whole of the body copy has been fully justified in order to make the text look neat, which is a convention most magazines use to make their pages look professional. 

  

My magazine stands out through the use of the colour palette of black, purple, gold, and white. Gold isn't used much in many magazines and using it for the R&B/hip-hop genre portrays the connotations of class, wealth, and how the genre is a multi-billion dollar industry, as gold is a flashy colour. Therefore, I have challenged common conventions of other magazines by using this exclusive colour palette.  

      

In terms of the font styles, nearly all of the ones used within my magazine are Sans Serif. Most of the magazines that are of a similar genre to my own magazine use Sans Serif font styles. However, my masthead challenges this convention as a Serif font style is used in order to grab peoples’ attention, as the lines on the font make it stand out. But I decided to use mostly Sans Serif font styles because the simplicity of their styles make it suitable for my magazine, as they have a youthful look which relates to my target audience of 16 to 28 year olds.