Coursework Evaluation: Forms and Conventions

My music magazine is genre specific towards metal lover and in particular the hardcore metal genre which isn't featured much in the existing music magazines. They layout of the magazine, itself, isn’t representative of the youth culture, but the colour scheme is. Blacks along with reds and silvery colours are some of the key signifiers and key colours in the culture of metal listeners. Secondary colours include yellows and whites. The secondary colours are used in my magazine to highlight key features and to make at times  my magazine stand out. The black and is linked in with my Masthead ' Metal Core' by adding reds na dother coulours around the masterhead it helps it to back up the signifiers of metal culture straight away as they look at the title of my magazine. I used some white text to highlight the key words in my cover lines and to make the text in my double-page spread and contents page stand out so that it may be read clearly and to a good standard. The words 'Metal Core' are used as a pun, play on words, of the genre of hardcore and metal, mixing the two words together and it also connotes the tempo of the music; fast and quick drum beats along with guitar solos and above all screaming are used throughout the songs and are often described as rage and heavyness of the music. I tried to focus my text around tone solid font. It being a gothic type font given it the impression that this magazines is different and backs up the genre as awhole.. One type tends to be very fancy and almost erotic in their lifestyle whereas the other tends to be very hardcore and closely linked to the magazine.

My photographs were a challenge to take because I had to think closely about the nature people who might be reading my magazine, like some goths, skaters, metal heads, moshers etc, so i had t o appeal towards all of them and the composition of lighting and backgrounds. The person in the image is four guys who look kind of rebellious and have no rulesin which to follow which could be used to connote their attitude and disrespect for authority.  Instead I tried to get them being very casual, not smiling which them in certain poses and with facial reactions and in areas where they tend to “hang-out" and 'cause trouble'. So I chose to take some of my photos in the corridors of the college to connote their age and their social class along with tying it into there education or lack of it.
I tried to make the double page spread a fairly simple but fairly traditional layout for a metal magazine, like existing ones, for example 'Kerrang'.I made sure it stuck with some of the obvious hardcore elements like for example the metal magazine 'Metalhammer'. I added these hardcore almost powerful elements to my magazine because I tried to represent their personality of the audience and bands rather than their appearance but most of the hardcore elements were required to represent the music.

The layout of the double page spread was nothing really special except for the extremely narrow gutters and the larger heading at the top of the page to tell the reader what the . However, the position of the pull quotes is fairly unusual

For my contents page i decide to have the text down the left hand side of the page with the contents on the right , in order for the reader to read that bit first and understand what my magazine is about and where it cam from. I included poictures down the far right to help show the audience what was featured in my magazine, as I found this a typical feature of music magazines in the ones I studied. I also featured my date and magazine masthead at the top of the contents page, as this i felt was another common feature in music magazines. I began i use the same colours and style in layout as to my title page, which helped to back up my genre and influence my audeince. My choice to include a piece written from the editorial team was taken from many example of magazines i had previously studied and as it was a relatively new magazine, on a focussed genre i thought i needed that peice to relate to the audience. The contents page has a similar layout to NME music magazine. I used this layout to add more of a hardcore feel to it. I used the magazine slogan on the front cover 'It's metal, it's hardocre metal' to carry on the house style. The house style, itself, is hardcore, black/red/ silver/ white, non-serif/serif font  and gothic fonts and lots of bolf fonts and heavy fonts to connote the gnere. So I have made use of real magazines and altered their colour scheme and layout to make my own music magazine.