Evaluation Question 6

What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

The most important thing I have learned during this project is how to use Photoshop. Because Photoshop uses an interface quite different to something like MS paint or Microsoft Word, figuring out how it worked took some time.

Evaluation Question 1

For my front cover, I tried to adhere to layout conventions so that potential readers would acknowledge it as being similiar to magazines they were used to. Being unique is all well and good, but people tend to avoid things that are radically different. I placed the masthead at the top, and the date and price above that, because these convey crucial information about the magazine. Below that, I divided my cover up according to the rule of thirds, placing my photo in the right two thirds, and cover lines for the magazine's other key acts in the left third. I then placed the main cover line in the centre of the page, just below the maain image. At the bottom, I placed the barcode and a list of the rest of the acts inside. If someone had read far enough down the front page to show an interest in the magazine, they might be interested in these other acts. In order to make my magazine stand out, and also to direct attention away from the poor-quality photograph, I had to defy convention. The photo doesn't cover up the entire cover, instead being framed by the chevrons. These chevrons also from the colour scheme, which differs from most standard magazine colour schemes. Instead of using white as a primary colour, it uses black, combined with green and yellow. I beleive this gives my magazine a greater presence than others and will help it stand out when put on sale. Probably the largest break from tradition was the obscuring of my cover image's face. The smiley face serves numerous purposes. First, it obscures the bad photography, as previously mentioned. Secondly, it matches up with the genre of my magazine, being a pastiche of Daft Punk. Thirdly, it adds to the bold colour scheme by being bright and striking. The fact that it matches the yellow is just a bonus.

I wanted to make my contents page easily readable, which meant following established conventions. In fact, the layout is almost directly inspired by Q magazine, albeit simplified. Divide the magazine in half, then quarters. The editorial goes in the top left quarter, and the cover article in the top right. The lower half is devoted to the article list. For easy reference, the features are in one column and regular articles are in the other. In terms of colour, the colour scheme for the front cover is retained; this is also following convention. Using the same colour scheme will allow people to gain familiarity with my magazine.

For the main article, I decided to abandon established convention and make something that captured the spirit of the genre of music and the act featured in the article. I would have to do this without exposing my audience too much to the poor quality photographs, while still using four of them. To do this, I divided my article into grids. While this is an established convention, my grids wnet diagonally, which gave it a skewed, stylised appearance. This helped to disguise the quality of the photographs by tiliting them. To draw attention to the smiley face that is my headline act's emblem of a sort, I used multiple copies of it as the background, thereby creating a coherent theme for the article. In order to create a coherent colour scheme, I used two different colour lines for the grids, then used these same colours for the interview text. Alternating between one colour for the act and another for the interviewer also made it easier to read the article.

Evaluation Question 5

To make a magazine that appealed to my target audience, I needed to replicate the loudness and agression of rave music. I also needed to give both casual and serious fans a reason to read th magazine. The Unique Selling point of the magazine is an exclusive interview with an elusive creator of electronic music; I hyped this article up to give the magazine a unique selling point. In designing the layout, I used bright, primary colours and black, coupled with an warning-chevron motif. This creates the agressive and chaotic moods of rave music. In the contents, I made sure to have an even mix of interviews (to appeal to the casual readers) and more serious articles (to appeal to the more technically minded "hardcore" readers).

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?


I intend for my magazine to appeal to the "raver" subculture. To represent them, I aimed to achieve the sense of detachment and surrealism that I feel best sums up the genre of electronic music that they listen to. I attempted to do this in a number of ways, as did the image from the other magazine in the picture. Firstly, I wanted to use bright colours to capture the feel of the bright strobe lights present in nightclubs. Because I was attempting to create an imitation of Daft Punk for my centre act, this way accomplished by superimposing a brightly coloured face over the photograph. Synapse magazine did this by feeding it's cover photograph through a filter. Also, I wanted to create a sense of surreal humour and a sense of the uncanny in my cover image. The funny smile on the superimposed face serves this purpose, and the filter over Synapse's main image makes the man in the photograph look strange and inhuman.

Wallbanger Magazine Main Article

Wallbanger Magazine contents page

Wallbanger Magazine front cover