Evaluation: Question 1

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

My product is different to many other music magazines on sale. I used a simple style in my magazine, not wanting to over complicate it meaning that people struggle to find something to focus on. I am comparing my front cover to one of Billboards front covers as Billboard use a similar genre of music in their magazines and also a similar target audience.

As you can see both Billboards cover and mine have a white background. Even though Billboard is using a white background here it is very rare that a magazine would use it. This means I have challenged the forms and conventions relating to the background, real media products tend to use bold or pastel colours as a background.

Looking at the masthead you can see the difference between the covers. I have challenged the masthead because it is not as bold as it normally is on a real magazine cover. Billboard has used a very bold font and their masthead is bigger taking up more space on the page. Even though I have challenged the forms and conventions of a real masthead I believe my masthead ties in with the style of my magazine.

Looking at the cover lines and the colours used I have heavily challenged those of real media products. My cover lines use multiple different bright colours, the font changes more then that of real media products. In Billboards cover lines you can see they have stuck to just a few colours that are quite dull. They have also used the same font/size for all of the cover lines, whereas comparing to mine I have clearly challenged the forms and conventions as my fonts and sizes vary widely.

Comparing the models in the two front covers you can tell that my model challenges the forms and conventions of a real media product as my model is sat down. I have not come across many magazine covers where the model is sat down yet. I had my model sat down purposely to challenge the forms and conventions of real magazines. I think it has worked well as my magazine definitely looks different to the Billboard cover next to it.

Looking at the price and barcode on my magazine cover I don’t challenge the forms and conventions of real media products, as my price seems pretty average for the amount of pages and content in my magazine. The barcode is located in a different place to that of the Billboard one, but the layout of the barcode and the price are very similar.

Overall I think my magazine has challenged the forms and conventions of real media products well and definitely has a different look about it. This can be good for my magazine as it will be different from others so people might be more attracted to choosing it. It could also have a negative effect as people might shy away from buying my magazine because it is something they are not used to seeing.