1 - Evaluation Activity

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

Generic Conventions
On this issue of the EMM magazine, we can see they've used a conventional layout, there's a big title to the top left, a variety of fonts, sizes and theme colours being used, and an eye catching summary of what information is inside the magazine.

To the right, you can see I've put an overlay of the page harmony being used here, while it's not exact, it gives you a general idea of the conventional layout being used here.

You can see they've used Daft Punk as their cover photo, which this alone will get them an audience. Daft Punk being two of the biggest artists in the Electro industry, people will certainly be willing to buy this with them on the front.

They also have a + graphic and the bottom, as if they're adding in special additional content, though I think that it isn't very well featured on the page.


Here's another one called "lectrik" and as you can see it follows the same sort of layout, however this one also has a subheading on it.

They've used a theme colour, yellow and black, to present their magazine.

To the left you have the conventional plugs / lures which will lure people in to buying the magazine, as well as having Daft Punk on the front.

It is very similar to the EMM magazine, however it also has an exclusive interview, though this is not very noticable at all. So on my magazine I've taken this and made it much more noticeable, in hopes that it'll help lure people in and buy the magazine.








How Does Mine Compare?

The titles are very different from each other, mine goes across the page, much like the lectrik magazine, as opposed to the EMM mag, which is much more smaller, brighter, and bolder.

Differencing from the two, Phantom looks allot more softer, easily done by using a much more desaturated colours, and using the eraser tool on the title

I've used blur on the artist of my cover at the bottom and a little on the top, which, psychologically speaking, would draw your eyes away from these areas (much like the use of focus / depth of field in movies and TV, naturally pushing your eyes away from an area)

Alongside this there's also an obvious flare / glow on the right side (Not happy with it) which makes it look more soft. I think I could possibly add some sort of gentle bloom effect

In terms of their conventional aspects, I'd say that all of them are conventional, on Phantom you may notice some differences, such as the subheading which goes along the entire bottom part of the page, and I have additional 'lures' on both sides of the page. There is also an 'Exclusive Interview' with this magazine, which is something that makes every magazine unique, if they have any exclusives. A good way of luring people in and getting them to buy, as they cannot find this content anywhere else.

In terms of the layout, they are very much similar, I have a variation of fonts, colors and sizes, and so does EMM & letrik. Each follow their magazines style and are conventional.

Costumes and props used to reflect the genre
Well, I didn't have a $65,000 badass looking LED custom fit & fan cooled helmet lying around, but we did have Mat. We've kept it simple with a black jumper with white drawstrings. Whereas Daft Punk are wearing what appears to be fashionable leather jackets and sparkly suits. The black jumper stands out from the white / desaturated purple background, it's contrasted, and so more eye catching.

Framing of image, Daft Punk are looking into the camera, whereas mat is looking off in the distance. I think that looking into the camera is slightly more used than looking away from the camera, depending on the type of magazine being made, EMM and letrik have gone for a much darker & stronger look, where as I've gone for a much more softer electro-pop hybrid look

Both of the magazines use different font, font sizes and colors, conventionally the headers / important names / info are always in big and bold text, followed by some much smaller text which relates to it. Both magazines follow this.

How the magazine represents the genre, both EMM and letrik represent the genre by having the 2 most known artists on the front of their magazine for that genre. Mine however is slightly different, since I'm not bffs with Daft Punk or Deadmau5, or any other artists, I cannot do that. Instead I tried to give my magazine a clean kind of new age look, electro-like, but not dark / borderline metal electro music, I'm on about upbeat electro music, like this (amazing) or this, so to try and 'illustrate' the mood of this music, I made the magazine much brighter, and added elements to try and capture the style of music, like the triangles you see on the contents page, and the slightly overused flare, though I think I could add alot more to further capture the style.

How my artists are represented
I think that the color scheme helps to represent our artist, as you can see, purple is the color scheme of my magazine, there's a gentle purple gradient behind Max, which give it a soft 'cool' (not warm) kind of feel to it. It's not overdone and heated, like you see on all these Katy Perry magazines, yet it's not empty and cold.

Colour Scheme
The purple helps makes it subtle, allot of magazines use a gradient on their artists, to simulate photography lighting being used. Even though they're taking photos using lights, they sometimes remove the white background and swap it for a gradient, so it can be tweaked accordingly. I took a photo, masked him out, and added a gradient as the background.

Here's the Phantom double page spread.

It follows through with the colour scheme of the cover and contents.

At the bottom left I've used a 4 column layout which fits the article onto the page and displays it in a much more professional looking way.

I've used a big title with variation in font sizes and colours, as well as the use of some simple shapes to make it look more appealing.

I have used a conventional layout of article and featured photo taking up a whole page. Much like the magazine DPS below.


This magazine has also used a big title for their article, and also has a featured image on the other page, much like many others. They've followed the same conventional layout of having a big title on the article paged, followed by an X number of columns, containing the actual article. It is neatly set out and is appealing to look at in hopes of getting you to read, of course.