EVALUATION - In what ways does your media product challenge forms and conventions of real magazine products?

My media product (music magazine) challenges many forms and conventions of real media products (music magazines) due to the features it includes and the ways it represents and delivers information. As stated in previous posts there are many different forms and conventions which apply to the front cover, contents page and double page spread.

They are very important as they are the aspects which make amusic magazine what it is. In some ways, they could be seen as the micros while the macro is the magazine itself. But in terms of the way in how my magazine challenged the conventions of a real magazine, I believe that it did it very successfully. To begin. the front cover of my music magazine was fairly conventional and was very generic in terms of the conventions expected for this type of genre magazine. However I did challenge one convention which was the usual direct mode of address for the main subject (in this case me). I decided to take the picture slightly differently as I wanted the reader to feel as if I was the dominant one and that they are not equal to me. Like many TV programmes and films, the powerful one is almost always shown by a low angle shot as this represents power and dominance; this is what I wanted to reflect in my magazine. In most cases, direct eye contact shows confidence which is why I went the opposite way, because Edge had a dark past and he didn't want to reveal it to everyone. Like one person said in the feedback for this page: "he looks mysterious". Moving onto the contents page; this challenged the conventions of a music magazine contents page in a variety of ways. Firstly, there is the main image of Edge looking out into the distance. Many music magazines don't have such over-powering images like this as they tend to take up too much of the page and can minimise the effect of a lot of articles. Although this is the case, I thought that my image was suitable as it linked well with the colour scheme and 1/4 of the picture was filled with more articles for a special section.

All together, I managed to include 49 articles which is a fairly large amount considering how big the main image is. Taking this into account, I think that challenging this convention in particular worked well and I wouldn't have done it any other way. The other convention which I challenged on this page was the editors section. Many music magazines either have no editors section as they don't think that it's relevant, or they do have one but it is very small and doesn't really have a place on the page. In contrast to mine which takes up most of the bottom-left handside of the page with a fairly large silhouette of the editor. I think I chose to do it like this because the editor is very important in a magazine like this because they should really recieve most of the credit. Additionally, this factor allows me to put extra content about the issue and if it is a special or the next issue should be bought etc. In terms of the double page spread, it didn't really challenge any conventions or forms of a music magazine in the rock genre as it followed very similar guidlines to many magazines I have seen in the past. These features include: a suitable colour scheme, a main image in the center, question answer format and a main title.

To summarise, my media product has definately challenged many forms and conventions of a music magazine in it's genre and it has done it successfully. I believe that many of the choices I made worked well and the slight twist on the expected features of a magazine made my magazine more original and professional.