Magazine Evaluation- Question One

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

My media product uses some conventional themes often used by music magazines. For example, music Magazines in the 'Rock' genre often use distorted or distressed fonts for their titles. Their titles are also more often than not written in capital letters. Black and white are the two most common colours for music magazine titles, closely followed by red. I use colours and fonts similar to many music magazines.

My own magazine title is similar to the Rocksound and Kerrang titles in particular.



Also, all three titles have connotations of being about music. For example, straight away from the title 'Rock sound' we can tell it is about Rock music. Kerrang on the other hand is onomatapoeic and "refers to the sound made when playing a power chord on an electric guitar". My music magazine, 'Arena' is titled because an arena is a popular venue for rock concerts and festivals and is also a one-worded easily memorable word to use as a title. Other ways in which my magazine is 'conventional' include the layout of the front cover, contents and double-page spread, the 'Laid back' mode of address in my article and the fact that my contents page includes two live photographs taken from a concert I attended recently. The fact I have a large photograph in almost the middle of my double page spread is also conventional.

However, my music magazine also contains some unconventional features too such as having a girl on the front, whereas most 'rock stars' featured on covers are men, as 'rock' magazines are male-orientated. It is also slightly unconventional that the model is holding an instrument as usually the front cover consists of photos of the model posing and the photos of them playing instruments are either featured later on alongside the article about them or not at all.