Evaluation: Question 1

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

 

 My music magazine, Punk Arcade, uses a large variety of forms and conventions in my front cover, contents page and double page spread. These forms and conventions include the masthead, the images I have used and the colour scheme. I also chose to challenge several of these forms and conventions in order to make my magazine stand out.

 Firstly, the masthead for my media product follows the typical conventions of other rock magazines such as Kerrang! it doesn’t necessarily break the conventions though I have placed the masthead underneath my main image which is something that many magazine tend to avoid due to risk of the magazine not being recognised by the masthead. I took the risk as I believe that my audience will identify with my product. The font I used for my masthead follows the generic conventions associated with rock music, I imitated a distorted and eroded effect much like Kerrang! uses since it is recognised as a feature for magazines of this genre.

 The images that I used within my magazine also follow the general conventions, by using a variety of different shot distances to make the magazine more interesting and to keep the audience intrigued. My images all communicate the genre of my magazine through the use of mise en scene (the dark clothing that my models wear) and through the brooding facial expressions that the models are pulling.

 The typical colour scheme for a rock magazine tends to be three colour palette of the colours black, red and yellow. The colours I have used however are black, white and red but they still fit with the genre of my product easily. This differs from magazines such as Rock Sound and Kerrang! who tend to stick with the colours black and/or red but alternate colours depending on the cover image. My magazine challenges conventions by using very simplistic colours but also using highly contrasting colours (black and white) which will enable my product to stand out against existing media products.