Evaluation Question 1

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

During the research and planning stages of my magazine production I chose to work in the indie/alternative sub genres and therefore acknowledged the forms and conventions associated with this style of music. My finished magazine product not only uses and develops existing conventions of both indie music magazines and music magazines in general, but also challenges certain forms and conventions as I will demonstrate in this essay.

The first aspect of my magazine which I will discuss is the title of my magazine and how it is presented as a masthead on the cover, I chose to name my magazine 'VINYL', after the vinyl records that preceded CDs and cassettes as ways of purchasing a physical copy of an artists music. Whilst it is easily assumed that a title referencing items or ideas directly related to music is a generic convention of music magazines, it is actually quite uncommon amongst top music magazines for the name of the magazine alone to offer any indication as to the subject of the product. 'NME - New Musical Express' and 'Classic Rock' are the only two magazine titles with a direct reference to music in the list of the top 10 music magazines in the UK based on number of copies in circulation over a 6 month period as posted by 'The Guardian', and so it is clear the name itself does not follow conventions, however it does not challenge conventions either as similar magazine names do already exist in real texts such as 'Record Collector'. One way in which my title is conventional however is the length of the title, popular existing titles as they appear on the front of the magazine include: NME, Mojo, Kerrang, Uncut, XXL and Q, the majority of these titles are very short and one word long, this is something I took note of and mimicked when deciding on my own title, by using this convention I was able to create a sense of verisimilitude amongst my audience.

Various fonts were used throughout my magazine, each selected with a specific purpose in mind, generally my font use is very generic and uses conventions of existing magazines, especially those with a focus on indie/alternative music such as my own. All fonts used in the magazine were downloaded from a website called 'dafont.com', the font used for the artists name on the front of the magazine and also for the header of the double page spread was called 'bebas neue', it is a very slim but bold font similar to what is seen so often on the front of 'Q' magazine, it allowed me to fit a long header into a small space on the double page spread and also allow me to put a lot of text in a short space on the cover. Other fonts used include 'lumberjack' a typically common looking font resembling mainstream fonts such as 'arial' and 'verdana', this was used for the main bodies of texts including the article on the double page spread. Again this is very conventional as it is similar to what can be seen in magazines such as 'Q' and 'NME', the decision to use this convention came from the desire to have an easy to read font in order to make the article more favourable to the audience.

The layout of my magazine pages must also be considered when debating the conventional or non-conventional aspects of my product, I developed conventions surrounding the placement of my masthead as it is traditionally imagined that the masthead should be located in the top left of the cover as is seen with 'XXL', 'NME' and 'Spin', I however chose to develop this convention by placing my masthead at the top of the cover but in a central position, this is because of the simplistic style I chose to adopt for the cover page that means a more central masthead appears as more aesthetically pleasing.

Costumes my artist wore for the photo shoots were carefully considered, I chose to dress my indie music artist in non-branded clothing, across all shoots the artist wore jeans with a plain white or black t-shirt and a green or brown bomber jacket. This used conventions of how indie artists are styled when purposefully appearing in the media such as can be seen with how band members from 'The Courteeners' are so often pictured, I chose to use this convention as I wanted my artist to be as convincing as possible and I believe that this would not have been possible if I chose to challenge traditional conventions.