QUESTION 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

There are more familiar conventions that I’ve used in my magazine which are also present in professional magazine. For example the use of particular features such as skyline, cover lines, pull quotes and additional information. Using theses in my magazine shows that I have used professional features and standards of magazines that are off the same genre as the one I’ve chosen.

The shots frequently used and are seen in my media product and VIBE magazine are medium shots. This is another familiar convention based on my chosen genre. This type of shot enables the audience to have a good visual insight of who the featuring cover star is

Vibrant and attractive colours have been used to enable it to stand out from all the other magazines on the shelf. Large font are used so that the name of the magazine stands out and facilitates the target audience to recognize it and be persuaded to purchase it.

The front cover of my magazine shares the common conventions which are used throughout these similar magazines that adopt the same genre I’ve decided to choose for my own magazine. Such as XXL Magazine and VIBE.

Based on the research I conducted a while back, it came to my awareness that the real media products of the urban genre tend to use one image for the front page, 1-4 images for the contents page and one image for the double page spread. However within my magazine I have included a wide range of images of the cover star and featuring artists, so that the consumers get the values worth of all the elements in this magazine.

My chosen colour scheme has remained consistent throughout my constructed magazine starting from the front cover to the additional double page spread. The importance of maintaining a consistent colour scheme is that is allows the magazine house style to remain the same for each piece of the magazine produced. This is also available in the contents page of Vibe magazine as in each edition the contents page has the same style and colours are used.

I believe that my magazine also challenges the forms and conventions of real media products:

In my magazine I have used a Q+A format for the main article and a paragraph of a brief autobiography about the cover star. This is because my target audience don’t have the time to read long articles, therefor a question and answer format was the most suitable because it is straight to the point and answers the questions the cover star’s fans and my targeted audience want answers to.

On the other hand most magazines that I have done research on used both Q+A, and journalistic writing format. They do this by publishing their article as a journalist with statements said by the cover star from the interview they had.