Evaluation! 01 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We have been given several different evaluation question to answer to round off our coursework in media, the very first one is looking at the different ways in which our magazine follow conventions of real magazine. I've created a prezi presentation to show how my magazine does this!

Creating Blink 182's logo

On my front cover I wanted to add one the logo/iconic imagery of the Blink 182. At first I had just copy and inserted on the logo found from google images, but then was told by a teacher that it could involve copy right issue. And so to over come this, I created a similar logo myself using paint and powerpoint.

The original version  

My created version 

Left image shows using paint to create the actual logo, and the right image shows the arrows added in, and all the selected items being group together to create one image

Editing my double page spread image

For my double page spread, I realised that making the picture bigger to fit across the two pages made the image pixelated and look dull. So by using photo shop I managed to sharpen the image, but also make it brighter and get rid of the creases in the white back drop.

The original image  

Brightened using photo shop 

Editing using photo shop - using the Healing Spot Tool to get rid of creases on the back drop 

Final version the one that I will be using for my double page spread 

Final touches

To all three of my peices I added some final touches and decided to add some effects to the text. I added drop shadows to the text to make it standout from the darker background

Added a drop shadow on  'this summers full gig list' to make it stand out  

Added outer glow to 'Contents' for the effect of it not looking bland

Added drop shadow to 'Alex Ozzy Osborne' to make it consistant throughout all three pieces, and to make his name standout

Double page



For my double page spread as the whole band couldn't make it in my inital layout for my double page spread had to change, and during the photo shot I had to improvise and take pictures of the bassist. Due to this I had to experiment with the images that I took that I've done.



Experiment with my first potenial image

On the image above I have also experimented with using a different colour for my pull quote, I've used a green as on the colour wheel, it compliments the colour red, but I chosen not to use it as its not a key convention of magazine double page spread as they usually stick to the theme colours of the magazine.



Experiment with second image



Editors letter!

For my editors I waned to have signature to sign off my letter as I've seen in many magazine that this is convential factor to have. So I found a website called Coolonlinetools.net which I used to create a signature for my name.


A range of text I can use to create my signature



My chosen signature, included on my contents page

Contents page so far

For the past few days I have been working the contents page, and this is what I've done. Added all the images I'm going to use, and added the subheadings for each category, and added text to my first category under News.

Feedback from my peers include to make the following changes that I will take action on;

-Making the red banner at the top of the page smaller 

-Move the Live Reviews up so the space at in between is covered up since there will be no one cover lines under News. 

Starting contents page...

I've moved onto my contents page now and have decided to do it on Photoshop. Since Photoshop doesn't let you line up text sometimes it can be difficult lining it all up and making sure its correct. In order to avoid that happening to me I created myself guidelines using a table on Word Document and inserted it into Photoshop. Also I created a banner to put on the top of my page of my contents page, with a bold red strip going across the top with my magazine name on it. This was inspired from looking at Q's content pages as they do this too, and its seen as a common feature across many music magazines.

Guidelines created on Word Document 

Banner created on Power Point Presentation 

What my contents page looks like with the banner and guidelines 

Inspiration Q magazine contents page  

Front cover

I experimented with colour on my front cover, from using orange and green where I got influence from looking at Karrang magazine, but then realised it didn't work out with my logo, and so I decided to stick with only using the colours, red, black and white.




Old version of my front cover, using the colours orange, green, red and black



New version of my front cover, only using the colours red, white and black