evaluation part 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product?

As you can see here I based my main idea of my DPS on Q magazine. As noted before I really liked the Q magazines layout. They are easy to read yet still have the factors that draw to the readers eye. Q magazine has also helped me to design my contents page with the layout of writing and photo arrangement. I felt that it was very important to keep a running housestyle therefore I based both my DPS and the contents page on Q magazine. I have constructed my double page spread so that it simply follows similar conventions of a typical music magazine. Comparing it to Q magazine it has a main image of the artist/band, title of the my artist , quotations and columns of writing although I used 2 columns of writing in mine as I felt 3 looked messy as it couldn't all fit on the page. By following typical music magazines, this enabled me to pick up the typical conventions and then made it a lot easier to make and produce my DPS.

As you can see Q magazine inspired me to use the letter 'L' behind the writing. I felt that this would be very effective as the name of my artist is 'Libby Lloyd' therefore the big 'L' (also used to lady gaga) reinforces the importance of my artist. By doing this I felt that it gives plain , simple text and exciting look, therefore engaging the audience to want to read it. Although the double page spread of lady gaga doesn't have any quotes I thought that I should add one. I placed the quote on the opposite page next to the image of my 'artist' because 1) the image of my artists wasn't central, therefore I had a lot of space that somehow, needed to be filled and 2) by placing the quote that involves words such as 'soul' and 'life' reinforces my artists personality and the fact that she is smiling signifies that she is an inspirational person. When editing the photo, I felt it was key to keep the 'vintage' style as seen on the front cover and contents page. As the image was quite different to others that I had previously used I made sure that I used similar, if not the same effects on pixlr as I used on them so that I maintained the housestyle and the genre of music in the magazine. I kept the same font that I had used for my front cover and contents page, giving it a consistent house style through out the magazine

 Yet again, you can probably see that magazine 'Q' helped me construct my contents page. Likewise, i also highlighted with a box the page numbers and different titles in the deep blue colour that I have used on my front page and DPS. I felt that this maintains the colour scheme and housestyle and also makes the contents page easier to read. My contents page isn't however, exactly the same to 'Q'. I used the structure of how things were placed on the contents page as I felt going in order down the page was the simplest way of setting out the contents page and I also wanted to fit another 2 images on the page therefore I felt that by using their structure it enabled me to add more images. The other conventions I used were the highlighted page numbers, and the sub-title 'features' is similar. I also liked the way they had the main title of the topic then smaller text for added information, I used this because I thought it would be effective at catching the readers eye. It also makes it easier to read and makes it more aesthetically appealing for the buyer. Because I felt that so far my magazine has been targeted to girls I thought that it was important to add an image of males to enhance the fact that my magazine appeals to both, males and females. Instead of using simple black and blue I thought I would use grey and blue. I personally think grey is a great alternative colour to black as it is much softer on the eye and looks more 'indie-pop' that 'hip-hop'.