The price of the magazine at £2.90 is fairly reasonable for this type of magazine because it has a teenage audience so I thought that it would be a good idea to have a price that is between the price of a child's and a adult magzine. Magazines like 'Q', 'Rolling Stones' and 'Mixmag' are generally all around £3. However as this magazine is for teens that are just slightly younger the price reflects the destined age group. I included the website, which most music magazines actually advertise, as it reflects the digital age in which we live in. Also 'Input' is a download magzine and a lot of the articles feature online conventions, and the readers are encouraged to go online for further information and the free downloads as publicised on the cover.
My magazine cover also has only a few colours, which is one of the things that I decided to encorportaed from my reasearch and planning. I chose to use purple as I wanted this issue to be quite girly as the image used and the featured artciles are more inclined towards a female audience, and the colour chose exagerates this. However purple can be construed as not being entirely girly and some males might want to buy the issue if they are a dedicated reader.
Aswell as these features, the language used is also quite conventional as it modern and reflects the style of similar magazines on the market. However it is adapted to suit its teenage audience. Also the language is suited to fit in with the download theme such as '... on your Ipod'. The tone is calm and fun which I tried to ashow throughout the fonts used. I chose a bold font for the masthead and the coverlines and then a slightly thinner font 'Arial Narrow' for my coverlines so the whole cover was not in a hard font.
The contents page and double page spread also incorporate conventions as the layout is again similar; including pictures with captions and images with numbers to relate to the featured article. On the contents page the text and images are split up and segreagated to differnt sides. It also has the month of issue and the contents heading.The language is also modern which attracts the target audience and is reminiscent of magazines aimed at this market. The double page spread has a large heading to attract the reader about features, which all magazines include.
Another typical feature used is on the double spread there are page numbers and at the top is a sign saying 'INPUT EXCLUSIVE'. This feature is adopted my most magazines on the market. I decided to put these boxes in as it makes the spread easy to find and gives it a professional look and also emphasises the importance of the spread to the magazine to the reader as it is an 'Exclusive'. At first i did not plan on putting one of these in, but the idea came to me when i thought that the background looked to boring and that there was not enough colour on the two pages. When i first put this in, i made a mistake and put it on the wrong side of the first page. I then had to quickly change this which meant that i had to re-do the stars. However I think that it improved the overall look of my double page spread.
The double page spread on a whole probably took the most time to complete as it was the biggets task. The language used was modern and remiscent of magazines today.
It is similar to existing magazines by means of the layout and the heading used. When compared to this spread from a real music magazine you can see that the overall conventions are realistically the same, though the style and content are very different. The one side is mainly taken up by the picture with the text separated to the other page. However there is alot less text but obly one colour is used again.
Aswell as being similar to magazines that are already on the market it is different in the following ways; the front cover has aplus box which has a coloured box as the background. This feature is not very common on music magazines and is mainly used in other themed magazines. Also there is a plain white background and no other images used.
Also on the contents page the text and the pictures are separated by a purple box splitting the page into. This also makes the magazine have a younger feel to it as it makes it easier to navigate around.
On the whole my magazine does not really challenge any conventions of modern, existing magazines. Though it has slight differences and changes and develops certain points it follows the same mainstream layout, choice of images and headings as this is what generally makes a magazine sucessful and attractive to its audience.
When i first started my magazine I had lots of ideas on how i wanted it to look and how i wanted to design it, based on existing magazines. I took the points that I had gathered from looking at my research and planning and used them to formulate the structure and content for my magazine. However many of my ideas changed as i started t produce my magazine. At first i planned to have a higher target audince and I designed my entire front cover to suit this. I decided that i would also have a female group on the front. But i changed this because in the end i only wanted one person on the cover to be the featured artist and i then felt that the style of my magazine would be better suited for a slighlty lower targeted age. These changes were based on evidence from existing magazaines featured in my research and planning.
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