Evaluation Q1

This is my front cover. After my research into existing magazines, I knew my page must be cluttered to be recognised as a pop magazine. To stick to this convention, I organised as many photo shoots as possible so that I was able to get lots of different photos to use on my magazine. When taking my photos, I kept in mind that for a pop genre, I had to have the model wearing bright makeup and clothes, and looking into the camera lens looking smily, happy and innocent as someone for my young audience to look up to. By shooting the photo so that the model was right of frame with a white background, I allowed myself plenty of room to fit in a lot of pictures. My original intentions were to place three photos and pull quotes down the side of the model, however after beginning my construction I found that I didn't have as much space as I had hoped. This means everything on the page is tightly squashed together with not too much blank space, which follows the conventions of a pop front cover.

I also broke the conventions of a music magazine by including a lifestyle section. My reason for this was that almost every single one of the existing successful magazines aimed at this age range include a fashion section within the magazine somewhere. Although it does go against conventions, I feel that by adding in this section makes it more obvious of the genre of the magazine and who it is aimed at. It also gave me opportunity to add in more shapes, puffs and different fonts which is used on magazines aimed at the younger generation to provide variety.

The red colour used on the artists name was also used throughout as a house style which follows the usual conventions of pop magazines. I also used the same pink/red colour on some boxes and fonts to tie the page together and give it a colour scheme. The red I used was chosen from the model's dress to make her involved in the rest of the page.

On my contents page, I followed conventions by using pink colours to appeal to a younger female audience. The fonts were chosen carefully with the intention to make it look young and girly. I placed the santa hat in the corner of the page to fill blank spaces and link back to my festive December issue. I concentrated not to let the festive theme take over as this would break conventions of a music magazine.                       
                                                            
I followed the convention of the three columns, and large numbers. I also used a technique in not only pop magazines, but many contents pages of various different magazines, to add a small caption after each topic to give a bit of information as to what will be on the pages. The banner at the bottom was originally intended to be a poster banner however I didn't manage to collect enough photos to fill the banner so I put in social networking details instead which I think works better. The language used follows the conventional colloqialism of pop magazines which makes it easy reading for the young audience.

I broke the conventions of a contents page as it doesn't follow an obvious colour scheme. I intented to use red and green to fit the ongoing Christmas theme, however it doesn't look as classy as I had hoped. I think this is because of the large yellow square and the pink background. We filled in the background a light pink to try and appeal to our young audience and make the blank spaces appear filled in, but if anything I think it has just made the page look overall messy and unfinished.

A lot of research into existing magazines was done for the double page spread. The language used and the way it was displayed was decided by slightly manipulating the typical conventions of the pop DPS's. The interviewing question-answer style was done in almost every existing magazine I looked at. The question was done in a different coloured font to the answers in order to separate them and the reader is able to quickly read what they want to without it getting boring. As with the contents page, I used colloqial language which in this case encourages the reader to hear the interviewee's voice whilst reading.
I originally intended to have all pull quotes in a circle. However after many drafts, I decided to use lips which I feel work well with the genre and age group. Following conventions, I put in the cloud at the top which makes it easily accessible for the reader to find the interview with the cover star.
I broke conventions of a double page spread by using the yellow colour as a drop capital, the rest of the page is red, black and green so the yellow stands out, and I don't think this works well.