Evaluation Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My media products uses, develops and challenges the conventions of a real product in various ways. Since my chosen genre was chart music I decided to use a mellow colour pallet which could be associated with the genre of music. This allowed my magazine look not only professional but also sophisticated.

A convention I tried to follow was a typical layout of a chart magazine front cover; I used this via referring from a style model whilst doing my work. The size of the main cover line was larger than the others and is anchored to the text. This is used in most chart music magazine covers that I analyzed, the main reason I did this was so that I could keep my magazine looking not only professional but also simple to read and clean but another reason for this was because my magazine was not supposed to look like a tabloid style magazine.

Another one of the conventions used was the style of my pictures, although I took a vast amount of pictures I had to use a picture which not only looked good and professional but so that it also helped to reflect the style of my magazine via typical conventions, I used the image as also a background filler as this is quite common with most magazine and not just chart style. Also the fact that the male was wearing a white top against a dark grey background made him stand out but in addition it also made the colour pallet look strong against his T-Shirt and background.

I also chose my masthead to be over the top of my main image this was to show that not only I could keep with the conventions of a typical chart music magazine but also I could break the conventions which usually suggest that the masthead is covered by the models (Main image) head but I chose not to therefore putting my own style into a conventional magazine and producing an original idea against the typical conventions of a chart music magazine. Another convention I followed is the use of colour coding the name in white against a purple background and the taglines in black with a purple glow on my cover lines. This allows the artist names to stick out on shelves but also follows the colour pallet and keeps the front cover look clean and sophisticated.

My contents page was inspired by the music magazine “VIBE” but also contained a lot of my own original ideas about how I wanted the contents page to look and how it represented the whole magazine. Many would say that I followed the typical conventions of a music magazine by using a medium shot as the main image of the contents page. I had my model dressed in a white branded T-Shirt which contrasted well with the background colour of the contents page (Grey). I then placed the image to the left side of the page; this was so that I could fill the right side with various information. I did challenged the conventions of Vibe when it came to size, layout and colour, I also put the page numbers in different colours- not only so that it stood out from what the article was but also so that it fitted in with the colour pallet of the house style of the magazine. I also strayed from typical conventions by adding a “contents” heading which is not done in Vibe magazine; this was part of the process of making my magazine look authentic but also original. I challenged the conventions of Source magazine as the artist used on the cover is the same artist on the contents. This allowed me to put the artist in the spotlight which emphasizes his importance to magazine and this issue is all about him.

My double page spread (Feature Article) wasn’t really inspired by a magazine as such but build up with various music magazines and also my original ideas. But I did follow the layout of Hip-Hop weekly magazine this was because it was clean and easy to read for a teenage audience, unlike the massive chunk of text in Source magazine. I also chose to use a medium shot image to be put on the opposite side to my text, this was so that the audience knew the article was about this person, in addition I decided to add a ‘Artist Fact File’ I did this to make my magazine more authentic and original and thought it would be a good idea to offer extra information to my readers which gave a small insight before the read the article.  Although my magazine was a chart magazine I thought that I’d use a white British male on my double page spread and the photo, this was so that not only he stood out but also so that people could relate as a chart music and not a particular style.