Final contents page:

This is my contents page, my final draft that i am very pleased with!

This evaluation covers the following questions:

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

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Who would be the audience for your media product?

How did you attract/address your audience?

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

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?




As you can see i tried to stick to all of the normal conventions of a contents page. I used sub-headings a masthead, a small icon of the magazine in the corner and bold text.

I used the inspiration of the NME contents page i have analysed earlier on, i liked the idea of a centre image with headings placed around it. I have found that headings in block colours are a common convention on a contents page, as they stand out and appear bolder. Here is no different, the headings are on a black background to highlight the gray text. Headings are usually placed down the side, so they look more organised and professional i have tried to keep to this style.

Perhaphs the biggest convention and code of a music magazine is the centre image, the main attraction. Q magazine's main image on one of there contents page's was James Blunt (seen in my blog), so therefore i knew that i needed to have a main image. The image will always reflect the genre- james blunt reflected the image of indie in Q magazine, whereas my magazine is a special trance edition but i wanted to still keep the indie/rock feel. I decided this close up of a microphone would be perfect, it is very indie/rock as this kind of music involves bands and singing, but the picture of the front cover placed at the top would remind the audience that this edition is a trance one, this was inspired from NME magazine, as you can this is one of there conventions and if my magazine where to be published i would want this to become a main convention of mine.

Another popular convention of a contents page- music magazine is a quote from an artist/band usually the one on the front. I have included one on mine to draw attention to the fact that the magazine will still mainly be about trance music, this is a quote from a trance DJ- announcing the comeback of trance music. This is in bold text and is placed at the top so it is easy to see.

Perhaphs my contents page does challenge normal forms and conventions of other music magazine's as it only has one main image, whereas the likes of NME and Mojo often have more and feature images of the band/artist. I thought by not including more images on the contents page i would draw more attention to just the one image, which this makes people want to buy the magazine even more as you have to turn over to see more pictures.

Contents page's usually have a main colour font throughout- NME uses the colours black and yellow on this particular one. I decided Grey and black would be useful as they contrast against the black background, this is just further developing codes and conventions of other music magazine's by using the same, but yet slightly different techniques.

Of course the page numbers are down the side to inform the reader. The page numbers are bolder for the more important parts. The magazine masthead is still present to inform the audience of what they are reading and so this name will stay in their minds. This is a regular convention of contents page's.

Even though the magazine is representing the social aspect of trance music as a whole this particular page seems to represent indie culture more. I have researched indie culture/music as part of my preparation- you can see this on my blog. Indie culture has become very popular and this style is also continued on my double page spread. The contents page often represents what the double page spread will be, mine represents the indie/ rock band Trip Hazard. The mis-en-scene of the microphone i think suggests immeditely an indie band will be featured inside. The microphone could be described as unkempt looking which indie bands are often associated and sterotyped with, as this is there look, also younger people are also associated with indie/rock music so you would expect the magazine to maybe represent younger artists, even though this is very stereotypical. I will discuss the representation of my double page spread later on.

I have already mentioned who the demographic is for my magazine, and i would say the same comes across for this contents page. What do you think? i have posted a blog about "My audience" giving information and asking for feedback. Do you think this contents page allows room for indie/rock fans aswell as trance fans?

Obviously having made my front cover first i did find the contents page alot easy to make as i had got to grips with photoshop. I found it interesting actually how simple it is to just draw a rectangle and then chose the colour black to get the block effect for behind the page numbers, i found most magazine's use this so i wanted to try and devlop this. The image of the microphone was taken after watching a performance from the band i have used "Trip Hazard", i opened the picture up as if it were the background and worked around that. I adjusted the levels of brightness, i learnt that you often do need to brighten pictures but also keep the contrast down to even it out. I also learnt more about the rule of thirds here, using a ruler on photoshop at the side of the page allowed me to line the pictures and the text up evenly, i discovered this by trying out the editing techniques with the icons at the top of the page. I also discovered that if you what they grey text to be placed on the black rectangle you must make sure that the text is placed after the rectangle using the right hand side of photoshop, where it allows you to see each step you have taken. You can lock layers together to make sure they are secure.

As you can see from my blog my preliminary task mock up contents page is completely different from this one. My practice contents page was just basic, using Microsoft Publisher. I have now advanced to Photoshop and learnt many techniques that i have mentioned earlier. Most importantly i have learnt that the contents page needs to be as professional as the front cover as this is what you see when you first open the magazine.