Question 1 - Pre Technology

My front cover follows the rules and conventions of professional magazines to an extent. By comparing Beatz Magazine and Instrumental, it is clear to see that there have been medium-close shots used, however the image which I used was not very effective as playing a role of front cover as the cover star is not looking directly at the camera thus reducing the interaction and engagement from the audience/readers. I have used this particular issue of Beatz Magazine as inspiration for my front cover, I have taken some aspects of the front cover and incorporated them into my magazine, for example the costume and props which are used. In both front covers, the cover stars are wearing hats and sunglasses, this relates to the audience as they are items which are often used by the target audience, and those items have some relation to the genre of the magazine (rap/hip hop).  Also, both magazines have several cover lines, however the layout is different, for my magazine I have placed the cover lines so that they follow the shape of the cover star, this was not a very wise choice as it makes the page look unprofessional and unappealing to the target audience. I can improve this by altering the layout of the page so that it is organised into columns.

The contents page for Instrumental has some similarities and differences to Beatz Magazine’s, for example both pages are structures in columns, however it looks clearer in Beatz Magazine as there are more images which have been resized in order to fit into each column, all images take on column where as in Instrumental there are images which take up two columns, this has been done for some of the images to make them more visible and clearer to see although it does not contribute to the organisation to the page. The Beatz Magazine looks more engaging due to the colours used, I have chosen to minimise the amount of colours used on the page to make the page look more sophisticated. on the Beatz Magazine contents page, the cover story has an image paired with it but it is the same size of the other regular and feature articles, where as in Instrumental I has made my cover story take up the majority of space in order to present importance in comparison to other articles. Both contents page use simple and bold fonts to make the text easier to read and each column has been labelled with the type of article which it contains, regulars/features etc.

The double page spread of Instrumental has some similarities with Beatz Magazine as well as many differences. A similarity between the two double page spreads is related to the layout and font, to an extent. Both magazines follow the conventions of media products as the text is structured into columns. Another similarity is that the largest bit of text which is present on the page is the title of the page/article, this allows the readers to know what or who the article is about. The title of the article is meant to reflect what It is about, I believe that the title ‘Flashy Lifestyle’ does just that as the article is about the progression through the careers of three individuals and how the rose to success, where they talk about some of their gains in the process. Despite the positives about the article, it may be ineffective as I presented it to some individuals of my target audience who had said that ‘the article was too long’, this means that it is not as effective as it could be, to tackle this kind of problem in the future I will need to condense some of the text to make the article shorter, despite this, I had coloured the text depending on its type, the questions were one colour and the answers were another, this would make it easier for the reader to decide on what they want to read.