Evaluation - Question 1

1. In what way does my media product, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?


The conventions of a magazine are things that commonly appear in every type of magazine - each laid out differently but then conventions still the same. Examples of typical magazine conventions would be a masthead, page numbers, fonts, colour schemes, writing style, quotes etc. In my media product I have used many contentions of existing media products to make my product look authentic, but the way I have used these has defined the genre and target audience of my magazine.


The magazines that I analysed presented these conventions in many different ways; depending on the genre of music, audience and type of magazine. Looking at all three, they all have used these conventions in similar ways, all wanting to attract their target audience.


In my work, I followed the convention of putting a masthead. All three of the magazines I analysed used a masthead, and I too followed this convention:

NME; the masthead is in the top left hand corner.

This was my masthead, also situated in the top left hand corner.




The other two mastheads of the magazines I analysed were at the top, but aligned central. Either way, the typical convention of magazines is that the masthead is at the top.




Another convention I followed was using a colour scheme. When analysing products I found that a lot of products stuck to one main colour scheme. For example, Kerrang!'s colour scheme on the cover and the contents page is red, yellow, black and white:

 

Kerrang's contents page also follows the same colour scheme as the front cover:

Again, I have followed this convention - my contents page and front cover have the same colour scheme. However, for all three magazines I also analysed double page spreads, and for all three magazines, the colour scheme was different. I have also followed this convention; the colour scheme of my double page spread is different to that of the cover and contents page.

The same colour scheme; blue, gold, black and white. 

Another convention I have followed is the writing style on the front of the cover. On my cover, I have used short and simple writing style giving the information about the features in short sentences.

This is very simple and down to the point.










Very similar to NME's cover:

NME follows the typical conventions of writing style on the cover.