Evaluation - Forms and Conventions

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

A convention in a magazine is something that is thought to be typical of a magazine and how they are put together, which exist to make the magazine easier and more accessable for the audience. Most magazines follow the typical conventions when it comes to the main things, such as the front cover. It is typical for magazines to have an image/images on the front cover, and to have the masthead across the top of the cover, with the other cover lines surrounding the image (but so the image is still clear and seen), It is also typical to have the main coverline the 2nd biggest and boldest thing on the front cover (after the masthead). Although some magazines differ in genre and style, they mainly all follow this typical layout - which is why we call it a layout convention.

For example, both these magazines differ hugely in genre. Kerrang! being a rock/alternative magazine aimed at people who enjoy rock and metal music (any age from 14 to 30), and Sugar being a magazine aimed at young/teenage girls (any age from 8 to 14) which talks about teen celebs, fashion and gossip. However, even though they differ hugely in genre, they still stick to the typical conventions of the magazine industry, by having the masthead clear, and across the top of the page, and one large image in the middle of the page (with smaller ones surrounding it), and the other coverlines surrounding the images.

When designing my magazine, I took a range of different idea's and put them all together to make a hybrid genre magazine. I took the idea of the Music magazine (our task we were given), and put my own twist on it to make it more exciting, and more importantly, to mould it to something I would do well and be able to create well. I stuck with the idea of music, but looked more at just the music by the artists, but also the way artists can influence us with fashion. This then gave me a link to create my magazine into a fashion & lifestyle magazine as well as a music magazine, so I did. I wanted a chic, elegant feel to my magazine as opposed to a tacky looking magazine full of neon colours and tacky images, So I took inspiration from magazines like Vogue and Elle because they stick to subtle elegance and always look beautiful, because of the simplicity they put into it.

When creating my magazine, I wanted to stick to convention, but in a more simple way. I stuck to a very basic colour scheme and only one image - I thought this would make my magazine look quite chic. So, in a sense I also broke convention by not sticking to the typical 'poppy' feel of most music magazines, full of banners and pictures with loads of colour. I chose to name my magazine Circus, as I thought it was unique and could suggest many things. To me - the Circus connotes a place of all things weird and wonderful, full of strange situations and outrageous people - which I thought would make my magazine sound like it could also be full of all things weird and wonderful when it comes to both fashion, and music. And, with most people, the more bazaar things they get to see, the better!

I thought my cover image worked out wondefully, for many reasons. I decided to keep the mise-en-scene of the whole cover pretty simple, to really emphaysise the image. I chose to photograph my friend Vicky, as I thought she would look beautiful on my cover. Because i was choosing to do a fashion based magazine, I thought it would look interesting if she was wearing something that was quite high-end and stunning, so i asked her to wear this lovely red designer dress she has with the back missing. I then based the pose of vicky around this, as i thought the back detail was the main part of the dress, so I had vicky in this pose looking over her shoulder with this objective gaze. I also had her hands on her hips to show a bit of attitude, but to show that she knew she looked good in the dress - because after all, fashion is all about confidence. To really emphaysize the dress, i had vickys hair up in quite a simple pony tail, and kept her makeup very neutral - this way she looked elegant, in stead of over doing it.

I wrote in a particular way when writing my coverlines, because I wanted them to be short, sweet and punchy, and by using the occasional acronym or alliteration, i thought this worked quite well. I also decided to have a number quite large on my cover as i thought it would look quite effective as its a little more interesting then just swamping the whole page in letters. I also wanted the cover to allow the audience to know what musical genre the magazine follows, and I think by having Gaga on the cover - it is quite obvious that the music genre is quite poppy/mainstream.

My contents page is not as conventional of other magazines though. Most magazines have a contents page with lots of information and lots of images, however i stuck to just having one large image and one smaller image. Also, most magazines don't have a particular colour scheme on the contents page (due to having so many different colours in the images), however i made sure i stuck to a colour scheme by matching it to the colour of Vickys top. I didn't write too much about the magazine and what was included, but the ones i did write sounded quite interesting and anyone music/fashion related would read on to see what else was included. I did stick to convention in certain ways though, such as having an editors note as well as a 'This week' and 'In every issue' section.

My Double page spread stuck to convention, but in a more sublte way. I had one large title, and then the article on one page, and a large image on the other page (a beautiful image of my friend Vicky, wearing lots of jewellry and red lipstick, looking sexy with a subjective gaze). Double page spread's are a bit different when it comes to conventions however, because there are so many different types. But, i followed the idea of the Vogue double page spread i recently annotated when designing mine - Simple, yet elegant and with lots of information. I thought it all worked out very beautifully, and the simple red/black/white colour scheme looked stunning. I also liked the punch title and how ironic it was (the way i had changed the word 'propagander' to 'propagaga').

All of this, stuck to my over all house style. by using clean, elegant bold words and fonts, and having my text all organized into blocks so they look very sharp - as well as having beautiful images which could help me build a colour scheme, I think my chic magazine cover/contents and DPS all worked out quite well and looked very professional, and like something you'd see on Vogue :)