Evaluation - (In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.)

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

My magazine is a Indie Rock magazine aimed at males and females at the 16 - 21 age range. I chose this, because the survey had a 65% male turn out with a dominant 16 - 21 (75%) age range. When I had discovered my target audience, I then had to look at style models. I used NME, Q and MOJO, because they were are relevant to my particular target audience; I took inspiration for colour, layout and style from these. In order to create a successful magazine, I had to create a houstyle that audiences would know was Indie Rock, that's why it was essential to use these style models.

This is the primary part of my magazine, using and developing current/existing forms and conventions of real media products. This is evident in my analysis of style models and use of their features. I developed on these features by tweaking the preexisting conventions; an example of this is the background colour, which is similar to the MOJO style model, but I developed it, giving it a different tone and feeling, yet carrying that Indie vibe. The tags along the side, the title and the image are influenced by the style models as well, with changes such as size, shape and placement in order to develop conventions.

However, in order not to fall into the trap of emulating other magazines completely, I wanted to challenge conventions, to make bold decisions that set my magazine out against other competitors. This involved choosing new and innovative fonts to use throughout my magazine and creating different ways to present my magazine. The addition of colour to my contents page to make it more lively and to help it fit in with the house style is an example of this. Theproportions of the text and layout involved some challenge; I had to take iniative, since I had less images and more content than my style model. I had to change around the layout, differing from the template and I created something different but familiar at the same time.