Design Techniques and the use of Media Product conventions

Magazine Front Cover

I constructed my first draft of the cover in Adobe Photoshop by placing my picture in it and adding in text. I added my magazine title and information of other music interviews in the magazine but was unhappy with it as it didn't look like a proper music magazine. There was too much free space in the image and I felt that the name of the magazine was a little too long so after a while I decided to change it. The picture below is of my first draft of the cover.

I began to reconstruct my cover by using the crop tool to cut unnecessary space out of the picture which made my model look bigger on the background. I also got rid of the title and the rest of the text and started writing again. After I had finished the final front cover looked like this:

The use, development and challenging of conventions of real media products

I followed the conventions of a media magazine by using the image of a musician and presenting her boldly. I also followed conventions by presenting her name with bolder letters than the rest of the text. The big yellow text saying 'Miss Metal' will be easily visable and will attract her audience into the magazine. I decided to use bright text to make it visable but stick to the rock magazine conventions of plain colour backgrounds. Using a black background appeals to the audience as the genre is rather dark. My magazine speaks on punk, emo and metal rock which are dark sorts of music further enhanced by how their fans dress in dark clothes and accessories. This is furthermore the reason why my model is also dresssed in black. I decided I liked this pose on my model as it shows her in a crazy stance similar to rockstars and the life they live. The guitar helps to show the audience what type of magazine it is and the facial expression is crazy, rock-like and exposes a tongue piercing on the model. Piercings are very common to rockstars which is one of the reasons I chose this particular person as my model.

I kept to the conventions of a music magazine by adding the barcode in the right corner, a promoting slogan at the very top, the title below it and the issue number and price on it. I picked the title 'Fuse' because it brings to mind electricity and power. Rockstars have alot of energy and power when in performance so this title relates well to them. Rockstar's guitars also use electricity when being played so this further relates to the title. I put a glow effect around the title to give it a look of electricity running round it. I also followed the conventions of a rock magazine through adding free posters which will further attract customers. The presentation of the price and the barcode makes the product more realistic. The Price had to be presented carefully because an expensive magazine may not attract customers and make them feel that their free offers are not really free at all while a price set too low may make them feel that the magazine is low quality or has not presented quality information which has resulted to them selling it cheap to get rid of as many copies as they can as quickly as they can. I also presented the website so readers can comment on the magazine and obtain information on the contents or release date of the next is. I did challenge a convention of rock magazines by not putting multiple amounts of pictures of other bands on the front cover. This wasn't done so the focus is kept on the main model as she is featured in the most important article.

Magaine Contents Page

As well as the front cover, I also made a contents page that I scrapped because I didn't like certain features. My first contents page generally didn't look much like a real media product. I also decided that I'd like to have a different model from the front cover, placed on my contents page. Below is the first draft of my contents page:

I then decided to restart my contents page from scratch and use Adobe InDesign to do it . I used the pictures of me as the model and ordered my interviews and page numbers in columns like I'd seen being done in 'Kerrang!' I followed conventions of a rock magazine by adding more than one image to the contents page apart from the main image which I placed on the top half of the page exactly like the 'Kerrang!' contents page I blogged about earlier. The column method of organization makes my contents easy to understand so that the audience can see whats on offer and easily get to the page that is preferred. This is the image I used for my contents page:

I felt that this picture was better because it is more of an outrageous image. The model is shirtless and with a gothic white mask which is part of the scary image of most emo/metal rock musicians. The guitar and headphones round his neck help to further enhance the music theme. I decided on this background because it looks like a caged place which is even more gothic as he may depicted as an uncontrollable dark, gothic animal. I even made his name, Macdeth, rather horrific and also intersting as a creative spoof off Shakespeare's Macbeth. With this name the musician forms his own poetry through his music. The new magazine contents page can be seen at:

http://www.slideshare.net/petefrasers/contents-page-final-2-pdf

Double Page Spread

I used In-Design to create the double page spread. I opened up my picture and did some text wrapping before opening Microsoft Word to write my interview. I really enjoyed writing the interview and it gave me a chance to explore my creative abilities on paper. I decided to have an extreme title so I thought 'Mental Metal' would do well to describe the energy and craze of this rockstar. I also enlarged a quote from the musician in the interview so it would stand out when first turning to the page. This again follows the conventions of a music magaine. I chose a picture which again showed my model in a cray rock stance with the tongue piercing more visable. I kept with the dark colour scheme and gave a short introduction by the interviewer before going into the interview which is also conventional. Another thing common to music magaines is distinguishing between the interviewer and the interviewee through types of text. The words from my interviewer are written in bold whilst my musicians answers are not. As not all pages in a music magaine are marked by page numbers, I decided not to add them to my double page spread.

The magazine double page spread can be seen at:

http://www.slideshare.net/petefrasers/double-page-spread-01