Evaluation: Part 4

Evaluation 4: In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Oxford Dictionary defines a convention a "A way in which something is usually done".  This means that magazines will stick to certain layouts, formats and contents that are popular so that their magazines sell and that they will gain interest from readers and gain popularity.

When I began to plan my music magazine I decided that I would make my magazine both defy traditional music magazine conventions and follow them. When I started my research around music magazines and I found an artist called David Carson who directed Raygun. Raygun was a very controversially magazine that was first published in the 1990's and was thought to be barbaric and many people disliked it because of its originality. I liked the look of Raygun's designs and I liked the originality that the magazine gave to the readers. However, I noticed that Raygun was not a very popular magazine because of it's originality and 'wacky' designs. After realizing this I decided that my magazine would stick to the traditional conventions of a music magazine but would also subtly challenge some. 

Firstly, my front cover. My cover had conventional features that will help the magazine appeal to readers who prefer traditional magazines styles. the way that my front cover image fills the entire page. This will make the readers comfortable with the cover. I decided important features such as the bar code would remind in the correct place to stop confusion between readers. However, my magazine cover solely defy's these conventions meaning that although it appears comfortable it the reader it still appeals to the in a unusual way. For example on my front cover my magazine my masthead is not in the conventional place at the top of my magazine due to my imagery and the idea that i wanted to defy some conventions i decided to place my masthead at the bottom middle to create interest in the reader.I also used an unusual image that will draw the attension of the readers.

Secondly, my contents page. I decided that this page would stick to conventions completely and i feel that this was a wise choice and as it is the page that most readers will be drawn to after the contents to identify what is in the magazine. It was important that this page was simple to understand but informative at the same time. Due to this my layout for this page needed to be very simple and traditional, to help find inspiration for this I used the search engine 'Google' to find examples of music magazines contents page. After finding examples i took different extracts of the examples and applied them to my contents page.

Lastly, my double page spread. This also manly stuck to music magazine conventions, the layout of this page was very simple and like the contents page i researched some examples of double page spreads and image that would go with this. I found an image of Hayley Williams, lead singer of paramore and i decided that I would re-enact this image with one of my 'models'. I then formed my text around the 'model'. I feel this is a typical magazine convention and allowed me to follow these conventions.