AS - Evaluation Q.1

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


After studying magazines, I decided to stick with one real media product 'CLASSIC ROCK' and use & develop that further for my own magazine.


Title of the Magazine
The title of my magazine is 'ROCK STATION' which gives the reader an idea that this particular magazine is regarding the rock genre of music.When initially planning for my magazine, I decided I wanted to incorporate the word 'ROCK' in the title. For this purpose I studied various magazines online, which had the word 'ROCK' in their titles. For e.g

After looking at these, I came up with two names; 'ROCK NATION' & 'ROCK STATION'. I went with the name 'ROCK STATION' because the word station gives me a sense of holding and permanence, hence the feeling of being stable and there all the time.
For this particular point I believe my media product develops & uses real media products.

Title Style
For the font style of my title I had to develop and at the same time challenge real media products, because all of the ones I came across had a very professional font used. Even the mastheads of 'ROCK EXPRESS' and 'CLASSIC ROCK' were not as casual as I wanted. Hence I downloaded the font 'ROCK IT' from www.dafont.com which was surprisingly exactly similar to something I had seen when I typed the word 'ROCK FONTS' in google. At that time I had thought that something even slightly similar would make my magazine look amazing.
Hence, I challenged real media products by using this particular 'casual' looking font instead of the conventional professional style fonts.

Colour Scheme

The entire colour scheme of my magazine consists of just three colours mainly; Black, white & red/maroon. I looked at various issues of 'CLASSIC ROCK' and then I kept three in mind whilst deciding my colour scheme. 

 The dominance of the colour black is pretty obvious in all three issues, which is why I decided to use the same colour scheme of 'CLASSIC ROCK' hence using real media products. I also used a low-key photograph of my model which was again an inspiration taken from these. However I challenged this particular magazine in terms of it's forms by using three smaller (coloured) images on my cover page which is not seen on the covers of 'CLASSIC ROCK'.

Placement of Text
The placement of my text is mostly concentrated towards the bottom of the page, this can also be seen in the issues of 'CLASSIC ROCK', however issues of 'CLASSIC ROCK' tend to have fewer cover lines/sky lines with all of the emphasis being on the main feature headline. Initially I went with the same idea since I wanted to stick to the forms and conventions of 'CLASSIC ROCK'.

However, I believed that my final product did not look polished and finished at all! It rather looked like a 15 minute job instead of something which had taken weeks and days of careful planning. I then decided to challenge the forms and conventions of 'CLASSIC ROCK' by adding more cover lines/sky lines however I still stuck to the original layout of 'CLASSIC ROCK' by not adding too many variations since if I had moved the text around my artist's face would have been covered hence not giving the same dark/dingy effect it is now giving.
Also, initially I wrote my artist's name in a font style similar to the one used to write 'LED ZEPPELIN'. I then made changes to that and decided to stick to just one or two fonts which looked similar just to give a feeling of uniformity and professionalism.

IncentivesWhat I noticed about most popular magazines was that they always have some sort of incentive to buy for e.g. 'CLASSIC ROCK's incentive of free CD's. I decided to incorporate this factor into my magazine by using a graphic 'flash' and including the incentive of free CD's, posters and passes.

Costumes/Props
For this purpose I not only studied magazines but at the same time looked for suitable clothing, instruments etc online. 

I decided not to challenge the conventional dressing of the rock genre at all because challenging it would have completely changed the look of my magazine. However, no make up was used on my artist for the shoots. I did two shoots of my model, details of his dressing are as follows.
Shoot one:
Black T-shirt
Light blue jeans
Wrist watch
Black army boots
Black open front shirt
Spikes (Hair style)
(Unedited images attached)

Shoot two:Blue T-shirt
Blue jeans
Blue open front shirt
Blue sneakers
Casual hair
(Unedited image attached) 

For the props we used 2 semi acoustic guitars and 1 electric guitar. All 3 are owned by my model hence we faced no difficulties in arranging appropriate props.

Images on the Contents Page:
The images used on my content's page are conventionally what music magazine contents have; rock stars, concerts etc. However, these images were originally taken by me on various occasions (mentioned previously) which is why I decided to use them instead of looking for more models. Hence I challenged real media products by just using images of concerts and not a variety of rock stars posing for images. 

 I had various other images but decided to use just 3.

Division of Contents:My contents are divided into two parts; Regulars and Features. A sight commonly seen in magazines. I used the conventional method of displaying contents because merging all of them together would have seemed like it is a magazine which has 'everything' new each time. However, this is not how established magazines work. They have some regular's at hand which have different content every time but follow the same layout more or less.

Main Headline/Pictures (Double Spread):I will be covering two conventional aspects in this point that I challenged. Firstly most double spread pages have at least one picture introducing the artist/band/company etc the article/interview etc is about. However, I merged my pictures with my main headline via a clipping mask (In photoshop). This sight is absolutely never seen in conventional magazines and I only saw it once. However, I believe that double spread was not at all conventional.
Hence, I don't have a clear simple head line nor simple pictures introducing my artist.

Columns:

I used columns in my interview again using conventional media products as an inspiration. However. Initially I made just 2 columns per page. But after aligning everything I realised it still looked too bulky . Which is why I went with 3 per page then.