It is important to identify and consider the conventions that are used in existing products to make a product yourself that is successful from that genre. For my AS media coursework i had to create a magazine contents and cover page for a school magazine for the prelim task and then had to create a cover, contents and double page spread on a music magazine of my choice. I transferred the skills that I picked up from doing this for my advanced portfolio which i created a magazine cover, contents and double page spread, a website and a billboard poster. To make my AS work work well I had to look into many factors that go into making a magazine. I looked into many different school magazines like from my own college and looked into music magazines like Kerrang and NME to look at the conventions used in a rock magazine. What I identified with the college magazines I analysed was that most had multiple pictures on the cover and the colours and theme of the magazine usually reflected the season in which the magazine was issued. The contents pages were quite simplistic and the text was kept simple too i carried these conventions with my college magazine but I also tried to make my magazine a bit more interesting.
When I was trying to look at the conventions for my main task in A2 I found that the cover images for regional magazines tend to focus more on scenic images rather than images that have a model this included looking at magazines like Cornwall Life, Cornwall Today and Devon Life. So when i created my cover I used a picture of a landscape of a beach instead of using a star vehicle.
The colours used in the magazines usually reflected the colours in the images to create a style that looks simple and elegant and fits in with the image used for the cover rather than looking completely different and not complimenting the picture. So for my magazine I used mostly different shades of blue, white and black to compliment the beach/ summery theme that I have created for this issue of my magazine. The fonts are kept really simple so that the main focus of the cover is the image and not the writing because it is the thing that will sell the magazine. I also found that it is key to balance the amount of serif and sans-serif fonts that is used in a magazine because using too many serif fonts can make a magazine look tacky and unprofessional which means that my magazine would not sell this is why I looked closely at especially Cornwall Today as a style model for my own product because it is the UKs most successful regional magazine.
The main thing that I changed about my product was the concept of the colours that I used in some aspects of my final product. For example I made my billboard image black and white instead of leaving it as it was with its colourful greens and purples I did this because I wanted to appeal to a wider audience and wanted to represent a different side of Cornwall by making the billboard simplistic but still professionally done by making it black and white it added depth to the image and some drama and because of the simplistic image it could be placed anywhere in Britain and still be appropriate for holiday makers which is a good quality that Cornwall Today has people from other counties in Britain buy the magazine because they like to know about the sorts of things they can do down here in Cornwall and the magazine does a good job of persuading people to come down here for a holiday which is something I wanted my magazine to have the ability to do too.
The main thing that I changed about my product was the concept of the colours that I used in some aspects of my final product. For example I made my billboard image black and white instead of leaving it as it was with its colourful greens and purples I did this because I wanted to appeal to a wider audience and wanted to represent a different side of Cornwall by making the billboard simplistic but still professionally done by making it black and white it added depth to the image and some drama and because of the simplistic image it could be placed anywhere in Britain and still be appropriate for holiday makers which is a good quality that Cornwall Today has people from other counties in Britain buy the magazine because they like to know about the sorts of things they can do down here in Cornwall and the magazine does a good job of persuading people to come down here for a holiday which is something I wanted my magazine to have the ability to do too.
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