Evaluation

By Daniyaal Hussain

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

I have researched into other magazines, such as “NME” and “The Source.” I have mainly copied the layout for the NME magazines. For example, the fact that my Masthead is in a large red box and I also used the title for inspiration since my title is “NRG” which is short for “Energy” something that often contributes to dance style of Hip Hop. Moreover, I copied the Kicker from a Source Magazine that used Drake and re-named it the “The Encore Ben-Jie.” The colours I used were pretty basic, only red and white which is what the Masthead in “NME” uses, though my mastheads font is white and it remains in a red box like most magazines. I slightly brightened the picture to hide the background as it would have fit the model even more. I have only used a bit of fonts to show professionalism and have limited my fonts to three as too many fonts do not show balance and often make the magazine look strange. My fonts are used in a specific way on the front cover as the pull quote has a much more mature sense of writing whilst the rest of the straplines are bold and curvy, which is used in most magazines. The Straplines that feature the artists have quotes underneath them and I had to research about each artist. Quotes underneath are actually lines to their songs and those songs fit into the genre of Hip Hop.

Front Cover TemplateMasthead

Straplines

Kicker

Pull Quote

Barcode

Double Page SpreadLanguage used in the Double Page spread is much more sophisticated as grammar and spelling is correct as mature audiences could understand, however the quotes that are spouted out from my model show informality. The layout and design are from different magazines that tend to use the same layout. The layout being one picture on one page and the actual article is on another page. Since people read from the left I put the title and picture on that side so that the reader can automatically look upon the title and see what the article is all about. Brightness of the picture was enhanced so the background would be hidden as there were ripples in the screen behind. My double page spread retains the basic white colour that most of my magazine tends to show off and the model that the front cover has. The reason that I chose white was because I was inspired by a magazine that was made by a person who made their own hip hop magazine and only had a white background for most of the magazine.

Double Page Spread Template

Contents PageThe contents page has a very basic layout which explains the quantity of pages and what the pages actually talk about. I got the general concept from magazines such as “NME” and “The Source” the same magazines which were used on my front cover and double page spread. I took one of the content pages and based it on the design that NME had. The design featured the model on the right hand side whilst the list of pages were on the left hand side with small little captions that described that the page talked about. I took these elements and applied it to my own contents page and I improved it by making the writing slightly bigger so people can see it and the font suited the social group I was representing which is “Hip hop.” The colours are the same as the other I colours I used which is a typical red and white. Language is formal, no wrong spellings etc. Despite the fact most hip hop magazines use incorrect spelling I decided not to, but to instead use slang in formal spelling to honestly make the magazine look more professional. The colours remained the same since I wanted it to be a trademark to the magazine, something that readers could easily recognize.

Contents Page Template