Evaluation of Finished Magazine

Above are the three finished pages of my media magazine, the front cover, contents, and double page article.

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BwZ6BI-TzDuuYjM4Y2RjMDAtNTkwYS00ZTgyLWJlNGMtMDU3ZTdjYjYzMDYy&hl=en

Above is the link to the general evaluation of my finished magazine.

Here are some comparissons between my finished publication and existing publications to show how my product uses and challenges the conventions of magazine design.

This is the masthead of my magazine contrasting with the masthead of a Kerrang! magazine which is an existing publication of my target genre. I used the same sizing of masthead in proportion to the rest of my cover as the Kerrang! magazine does because I thought any smaller would be not as noticible but any bigger would divert attention from the rest of the cover. I used a similar strapline above the masthead to advertise a give-away competition as I think it sparks the reader's interest as soon as they glance at the top of the magazine and would make them more likely to buy it. Instead having the name of my magazine in big lettering across the masthead, I decided I would make it a smaller and more recognizable logo, and instead draw attention to it by placing it at the center of a circular colour scheme. It creates the effect of a bullseye and implies that my magazine is at the dead center of the music business, hence the name CMS - Central Music Scene. I also put the date and issue no. in my masthead because I thought it looked tidy at the top of the page as opposed to the bottom, and is more noticible when trying to order a copy for example.

This is the editor's note from my magazine's contents page (top) and one from a Kerrang! magazine's contents page (below). I added an editor's note to my contents page because I think it introduces the magazine nicely, while giving some personal thoughts from the people behind the publication and making the reader feel on equal terms with them.I used the same colloquial writing style for my editor's note to give a feeling of personal connection between the reader and the editor.

Above is the center of my double page article (top) and the center of a double page article from an NME magazine, which is an existing publication from my genre. I used an image in the center of my article because it breaks up the text nicely and makes the page much more pleasing to look at. The image also reflects the article, additionally I laid out my article in the same collumnular format to make it appear like a newspaper publication, and give the implication of seriousness. Something I did differently to the NME article was that I did not use a large pull quote with my center image, only a caption. Instead I used two pull quotes on opposide corners of the article to break up the text more and summarize the collumn that they were in. I think this makes my article look better than the NME article because it is more spread out as opposed to being focussed entirely on the center of the page.

A couple of things I did that challenged the conventions of magazine design were my use of images. I only used one image for my front cover, which was for the main flash. Some magazines use more than one image on the cover for the main sells etc, but I decided that doing so would have drawn attention away from the main flash image, so chose to only have text-based main sells. I also only used two images in my contents page, unlike the copies of Kerrang! magazine that I had analysed that show around 8 images. I thought that having so many pictures in the contents page would have made it seem too cluttered, I wanted my contents page to be easily readable and navigatable.