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

The main conventions of a magazine are a large image of subject covering the whole page, a large bold title of the magazine with a bar code, small bodies of text showing what is inside the magazine. The subject on the front cover is conventionally supposed to make eye contact with the audience which is where my magazine is not conventional to usual music magazines as on my magazine, the subject is covering her eyes by looking through CD's. However, the audience could still imagine that the subject is looking at them through the CD's and the image is also covering the whole front cover which is conventional of a music magazine. Other ways in which my magazine is conventional is that it has a bar code and also a large bold title 'modest' to show clearly what the name of the magazine is.

A lot of magazines also use colour images on their front cover, whereas I wanted to have my image in black and white as it looked much smarter to me and was different so stood out more from existing magazines. My magazine also has very limited text and images on the front cover as when I was looking at existing magazines, I felt as though it looked very cramped and there was a lot going on so I wanted to keep mine very simple and easy to read. I used black and white images on my front cover and my double page spread yet I used some colour images on my contents just to show to my audience that not all of the magazine would be black and white as I feel like that would be quite boring if it was all fully black and white. Throughout my 3 products I have used the same font colours and fonts to keep the consistency.

I did not use any suggestions from any questionnaires or surveys as I did not get round to making a one. However, it would have been extremely helpful to me if I had done because I would have been able to ask people the questions who are part of my target audience. 

The Four F's


Format: I used a magazine style that I had seen before on an existing magazine which is the 'Polaroid' style with the white border as I thought it made the magazine look really appealing and fits with the indie style I was going for. The contents and front cover would be the same format each issue and so will the font. However, the colours used would change each issue just to give each of them a unique look to others so they are all individual.


Formula: The types of articles would be music based and would vary in length as people have more to say than others so they will definetly be different sizes, such as that an article could use two double pages. Each magazine would include a contents and an advertisement on the back to give the magazine more money.

Frame: The margins and gutters would all be the same in the magazine and in each issue to create a consistency.

Function: The message my magazine would be sending is a unique style to other magazines. It is aimed at not being conventional like usual popular music magazines.