EVALUATION ACTIVITY 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms a

nd conventions of real media products?

The music magazine indsutry has become very competitive over the past few years, making it a whole lot easier for me to distinguish and take into account ideas that I may be able to input on my own magazine. Brand identity allows to appeal to my target audience and genre.

The title I have decided to use is 'Broken Ghost'. Before deciding the final name for my magazine, I had a list of several names I could have chosen from. The names are as follows:

• Beats
• Trends
• New Edition

I thought that the name 'Broken Ghost' would appeal more to my target audience, which is that of a 'Indie Scenester'. I went for the colour red as it is a very bright colour which highlights attention to its readers. The colour red was used not only on the masthead, but it run

s throughout the magazine along with the colours black and white. I wanted my magazine colour scheme to be dark and bright at the same time. I used the coloursblack, white and red. By using these three colours, I feel that I have achieved the task of enticing buyers. In addition to the colour red of themasthead, the background of the magazine front cover is black, which equally allows the masthead to stand out amongst other magazines.

Many magazines use a feature called a 'cover mount'. A 'cover mount' can be defined as a 'freebie' which are placed on the magazine front cover acting as a selling point to its audience. A cover mount on a magazine is used to entice a reader into buying the magazine. For example, my magazines cover mount says, "4 FREE posters inside todays issue of the Broken Ghost + a chance to win FREE tickets to see Fugitive in concert". The word 'Free' has been written in block capitals to further illustrate the importance of this message. How I created my own cover mount to me about 10 to 15 seconds. I first had to select a shape which was an eliptical shape creating that of a circle. I then filled the circle with a red colour and made the circle slightly opaque giving it a see-through effect.

Here are several examples of cover mounts on other music magazines:

This image is that of my main image, cover lines and the cover mount. My main cover lines are, "Exclusive Interview", "Get up close and

personal with the members of Fugitive", "Photos from there tour in Miami". The cover line 'Exclusive interview', illustrates that within this magazine, there is something 'NEW' to read. The use of this cover also entices an audience into picking up the magazine and wanting to purchase it. Many well known magazines use this feature to attract its buyers, many frequent magazine buyers look forward to these new features. The main image of my magazine is that of my three artists standing side by side. The image has been altered to black and white following the house style of black, white and red. The black and white feature allows the picture to look more clear than it did with its original hue. The gaze of my artists are fixated on the camera which gives the audience the full attention of the artists.

As you can see, my magazine fits in perfectly with the other well known magazines such as; Vibe, Q, and Rock Sound.