Evaluation - Conventions

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

In my research and planning, I analysed music magazines that were of the genre I wanted to base my product around and looked at the magazines in relation to conventions. As ‘Indie’ was the specific genre I wanted to construct, I chose to analyse three of the most popular ‘Indie’ genre magazines (NME, Q and SPIN) to give me the best idea to what sort of conventions are used to appeal to the target audience that I was aiming for.

Front cover:
- Having an ordered yet cluttered layout, to achieve this would be by having numerous coverlines on the cover about different stories featured in the magazines.
- Coverlines also across the top and the bottom of the cover.
- A colour scheme of black and white with another colour which would usually be red. Sometimes on the front cover yellow would also be used.
- Big and bold fonts, the majority being in black.
- An image of a band that fits into the genre of the magazine.
- A list of a few band names in one of the bottom corners.

On my front cover, I made sure to stick to the conventions of the Indie genre as the front cover is the most important part of the magazine in attracting the target audience’s attention. The masthead has been placed at the top of the magazine, in a red bold font which is typical of an indie genre magazine. However, I did make my magazine appear less cluttered than a usual indie magazine as I wanted the cover to seem much more ordered, as well as to keep the main focus on the image and the main title ‘Kickback’, I also felt this made the magazine look more mature against other rival magazines of the same genre. My main image was shot with a plain background as another way of keeping the band as the main focus in order to attract fans, the people in the shot are wearing black and grey clothes to stick to the colour scheme of the magazine. I used a list of 4 band names in the bottom left corner to stick to conventions. The fonts I used on the cover ( the most effective being ‘impact’), are all bold and stick to the colour scheme, i stuck to the conventions here too because my target audience is males and I felt that keeping the bold fonts convention is one of the most important for attracting the male target.  The fonts are mostly in white making sure that they could actually be read by the audience as the black font was too dark when against the photo.

Contents Page:
- A band index usually down the left hand side of the page.
- Ordered layout, usually in columns for the articles.
- A photo and ‘sneak peak’ to a story that is featured in the magazine to keep the contents page from seeming boring.
- The title of the magazine at the top of the page
- Different headings for different types of articles.
- At the bottom, a box telling the reader to subscribe.

For my contents page, I stuck to all the typical conventions for an Indie genre magazine. On the left hand side of the page I have created a band index of all the bands that are featured in the magazine which are prior to the page numbers. I have formatted the page numbers to be in bold, and the artist’s/bands names to be regular as I felt that this would make the page numbers stand out and would avoid confusion to what the numbers are relating to. I also made sure this problem didn’t occur on the right hand side where the contents is, I did this by making the article names black and having the page numbers red and bold at the side of the articles. I stuck to an ordered layout for the contents page using three headings ‘Features’, ‘News’ and ‘Reviews’ on the right hand side of the page where the contents of the magazine in located, this isn’t only a way of keeping the page looking less cluttered, but it also separates articles from each other to avoid confusion. As you can see, in the centre of the page I have placed a picture of a different artist in a black and white shot to stick to the colour schemes, and to also add some variety in the pictures used throughout the magazine. Under the picture, after introducing the artists name so that the audience are reminded of who she is, is a short article relating to it, which keeps the audience entertained as well as reminding them about the genre of the magazine; it also makes the contents page look a lot less boring. I have stuck to the same colour scheme as the front cover by using black and red fonts. At the very bottom of the page, I created a box encouraging the audience to subscribe to the magazine, as you can see the colour scheme in this box is different to the rest of the page as it has a black background and yellow font, this is to make the box stand out more as if I noticed that when it was the same colour as the rest, it was a lot more unnoticed. 

Double Page Spread:
- Main image with a few other smaller ones.
- A different colour scheme to the cover.
- A ‘kicker’ followed by an article, usually an interview.
- Questions in bold/different colour format.

I have once again used an ordered layout for my double page spread to ensure that it is clear to read, I did this also by putting the text into columns to separate it all and the questions were put in a bold and different coloured format, the colour used for this was blue as I decided that blue would be the colour scheme for my double page spread, and it was also the most popular colour on my research survey. I started off the article with a kicker telling the audience who the interview is about and what’s going to be involved as a way of introducing the interview. I kept the background simple by keeping it white as another way of making it look clear as well as keeping the audience’s main focus on the images and text. I used page numbers at the bottom of each page and formatted them as bold so they would stand out. The text is on the left hand page as I thought this way I could have my main picture taking up most of the right hand page, as well as this picture I have placed two pictures of the band members separately at random locations that were left blank to make the article look more full and less plain. The main picture I used for the article has a plain background like the one on the front cover, showing they are from the same shoot, reminding the audience that this is the main feature in the magazine and also because I wanted the attention to be mostly on the boys as their personality comes across in this picture as they are messing around, so the audience gets the impression they are not ‘serious’ people and in contrast to that they are fun, i have added captions in an italic font to each image across the pages as a way of telling the audience what the boys were doing and so the audience feel a connection with the artists.  I only used a few simple fonts on the page which were ‘Tahoma’ for the main article and ‘Arial’ for the fact file, as well as the font used for the title of the article (the name of the band). I used these fonts as they were simple and easy to read, which makes the spread look clear as well as professional. For the title of the page, I used the same font that I used for the title of the magazine as it was a clear, yet very bold font, however I changed the colour to stick to the colour scheme and also to make the fonts look various. I added a pull-quote into the centre of one of the columns as a way of breaking up the text as well as showing the audience what was to come, this quote was "The Beatles are my all-time favourite band", which is one thing that fans of the band would be quite interested in knowing. I used an in-depth interview covering all sorts of areas that a normal indie genre magazine would also cover. I used the same kind of language that the target audience would use to so that the reader would be able to relate to the speaker as well as making it seem realistic, keeping it very relaxed.   

Front Cover:

Here is an image of my magazine cover next to an NME cover. As you can see, despite some obvious differences, the two look fairly similar when thinking of the conventions for the genre. Both mastheads are placed in relatively the same place and both have the same formatting as they are both bold and red, and underneath is the date of when the magazine is issued as well as the issue number and price of the magazine, there is also some form of text on the right of the masthead on both magazines. The images are both placed in the centre of the page with fairly similar types of shots, however the NME versions is slightly closer up. The covers share similar coverlines, showing they are both of the same genre, such as at the bottom of my product it mentions Glastonbury festival, and at the top of the NME product, it mentions Reading and Leeds festivals, showing that the magazines have similar topics and stories within them. The colour schemes are very similar, as I already mentioned the red masthead, also the second largest piece of text for both the covers is in yellow and placed in the centre of the page, both the yellow pieces of text are the names of the bands that are pictured on the cover, both suggesting that the main articles in the magazines are about these bands. However, there are some differences between the covers, such as the NME magazine didn’t stick to their normal convention of having a list of bands down one of the bottom corners on this issue, and instead placed it in the middle underneath the main bands title, but for my magazine I stuck to the typical convention. Both magazines have kept a fairly ordered layout making them look professional and mature. 

Contents Page:

My contents page layout is very similar to this issue of NME’s content page. Both of which are in a very ordered layout to create professionalism and to make sure they are clear to the reader. Both the single pages have the contents of the magazine on the right hand side of the page, listed here are all the articles featured in the magazine which have been separated by different headings, however NME have used more headings than I have perhaps to be very specific whereas I have used the 3 main headings that a typical indie genre magazine would have. Both of the colour schemes are very similar as they each have their red masthead at the top, with black down the right side and red down the left side, with a black box at the bottom which contains yellow and white writing. However on my magazine I don’t have the black background at the top of the page. Both the magazines, after the masthead, introduce the contents with “this week”, which is a typical phrase that indie genre magazines have in the contents page, however the font I used is much smaller and less bold because I wanted my masthead to stand out more, whereas NME kept it the same size. The band index is located on the left hand side on both the contents pages, however mine goes down all the way down to the bottom whereas NME’s stops at the subscription box at the bottom. I have stuck to the conventions of having a main image in the centre, however mine is smaller than the NME versions, but still the main focus of the page. Both pictures also have some writing underneath, however NME’s is more of a caption than a ‘sneak peak’ to one of the stories featured in the magazine. Overall I have stuck to the stereotypical conventions of an indie genre magazine for my contents page by keeping it plain and ordered so that the reader doesn’t get confused and also keeping it professional.

Double page spread:

I think my double page spread is fairly similar to professional indie magazines because I have followed the basic conventions. Both of the magazines have a clear main image which stands out as they both take up the whole of a page. The spreads both use a different colour scheme to the cover and contents of the magazine. This is to add variety to the magazine and to ensure that the reader isn’t getting bored of what they are seeing. Down the right hand side of the right page of each magazine, a box has been placed, although the NME versions is short articles about a completely different subject, to show this they have used a black background. I have formatted my box to be blue to show that it is still a part on the same topic as the rest of the page despite being a different part as it is a ‘fact file’. However, NME have used a fact file at the bottom of their main picture. Both of the magazines use similar fonts for the text because it is small and must be clear to read, the text is also black for both apart from my questions which as you can see I have made blue to avoid confusing the reader. The type of article is different for each magazine, because I have done an interview for mine but this NME one is just an article probably trying to promote the band’s music to the reader. The magazines both have the title of the article at the top of the page in bold and blue to represent the colour scheme. Like NME, i have used different/smaller pictures, I have placed two within my interview to keep it from looking dull and boring with only one image and also to break it up a bit so that it doesn’t look as though it is just text on one side and a picture on the other.