Evaluation Question 1

At the start of the project I analysed a couple of existing music magazines to see how magazines used the conventions of a magazine to attract their chosen target audience. There are many ways my product uses forms and conventions of a real music magazine. In my music magazine I used these conventions to imitate a real music magazine and make my product look more realistic. One of the conventions I used in my magazine that is evidently shown in most music magazines is the large masthead at the top of the magazine, as I wanted to imitate real magazines, and make my masthead stand out from the rest of the magazines. I did a little experiment as part of my research in which I entered different newsagents to see which magazines catch my eye first. The conclusion was that I always seem to notice the magazines with a big, bold masthead first. This gave me guidance as to how I should present mine for my product. By doing this my magazine will be able to attract my target audience as it is very big and brightly coloured and will stand out among other magazines.

A selling line is another convention that I used in my music magazine as it is used by most music magazines to give a brief but curious hint on what to find inside the magazine. For most magazines, it is the main selling point. On others, it is a secondary way to grab the audience’s attention. Hence the reason why it can mostly be found above or beneath the large, eye grabbing masthead. As my magazine is an R’N’B/Hip-hop magazine my selling line was another way to communicate with and help attract my target audience. My selling line reads ‘No.1 source for all things Hip hop and R’N’B’.

Another way I followed the conventions of a magazine is thatI used a barcode and a dateline. Like most magazine, my dateline is placed underneath the masthead. Also, I placed my barcode at the bottom left hand corner like in most magazines that I looked at while doing my research.