Evaluation - Forms and Conventions

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

My magazine generally uses and develops forms and conventions of real media products. For example, on the cover my mast head is at the top, the image clearly displays the model’s face, the cover lines are to the sides, and my bar-code is at the bottom. My cover doesn't develop the forms and conventions a lot; instead it mainly sticks to the core ideas. One way on the cover that I develop, however is in the way that I use more colours than an average magazine. Normally, magazines only have three colours, but mine has five. This is because I went with a similar idea that MOJO magazine uses, in that every issue has a different theme with different colours, but keeps one or two the same in every issue. On my cover the two or possibly three that remain on every issue would be the black, white and possibly green as well to keep the technological theme. The pale blue and deep purple, however would change from issue to issue depending on the cover image.

However, where my cover follows normal conventions, I feel my contents page develops them. My influence on the contents was an old issue of Games Master, which had the entire main articles (the regular, features etc.) along the bottom, and all of the corresponding images (and then some) in the top two thirds of the page. My contents page builds on this; the top half of the space that isn't taken up by my masthead is dedicated purely to featured articles, I only highlight three, all three have a picture and page number, and the only text is to explain what is in the picture, more than what the article is about. I have also pointed out which are the most important by saying which have featured on the cover. The bottom half, however, is for the regulars; here there is a minimal amount of text explaining the article, and a corresponding page number. Normally, when there’s an image on a contents page, there is a caption briefly explaining what’s in the image, trying to draw the audience into reading it. However, in my magazine, I am trying to do the same thing but by creating an enigma by supplying as little information as possible.

My article, I also feel develops on normal conventions. Mainly in the use of images. My article features four images. Normally, all four images would be clearly defined, perhaps with a supporting caption. However, all four of my images are covered by the text, and three of them are completely black silhouettes, behind everything else on the page. This is to give the page a more personal feel to the featured article. Had I made an entire magazine, the three featured articles would all look like this, albeit with different pictures and the regulars would just have a solid colour in the background. The one image that was left its original colours is also behind the text, but the text has been lowered so you can see the subject’s face. This also challenges convention, as normally there would be an image where no text is covering it at all, but on mine there is only one main image and that is almost completely covered in text. Besides the text, the colours used on the featured article page match those of the cover. This is another idea which takes inspiration from MOJO magazine, and is one that I would use in my magazine if I were to make more issues, in order to give a sense of uniformity, and create the idea that that article is taking over the magazine: that it’s the most important thing, so therefore it must be read.