Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

You could say that I used the conventions of a normal magazine to an extent. I placed my masthead ‘Iconic’ on the top of the magazine cover as I thought it would be suitable and more of a norm in terms of what a magazine would look like, I made my models head cover a bit of the masthead in relation to magazines such as source and vibe, I did this because if I placed my picture under the masthead the image of my models would seem as if I deliberately tried to avoid the masthead. On the left as you can see is an image of my magazine cover with my models head slightly over the letters.

In relation to my magazine this edition of source magazine has similarities to my magazine with their entire model’s corpses touching the masthead, this can be seen as flowing the rules and conventions of a magazine. I also followed conventions by placing my barcode on the left of the page vertically.

As my magazine is targeted at afro/Caribbean’s it could be said that I followed rules and conventions of a Hip-Hop magazine as my models are the same ethnic (African) minority. On the other hand Iconic magazine challenged the conventions of a music magazine. In terms of most hip hop magazines in modern society do not use many bright colours and the imagery is sometimes negative, but with sentimental meaning as you can see in the image below ‘TheSource’ magazine only uses three colours maximum.

Whereas with Iconic magazine (below) bright colours are used on the front page as well as with the models bright red clothing. In addition to challenging the rules and conventions, backgrounds in hip hop magazines are usually plain or themed in one colour with my magazine I used two colours (purple and white) and purple is a bright colour, I used these two colours throughout the project in different ways such as changing gradients etc.

Another example of challenging conventions was by altering the photo of my models by blending them in with the background which is not normally seen in music magazines, in most music magazines the most that is done to a photo is increased brightness or contrast with my magazine I added effect which in another example of challenging conventions of a music magazine. Also as you can see I used 3 different colours.

Furthermore I have also developed conventions of a music magazine as like ‘The Source’ magazine there are hardly images of groups/bands on the front cover of an urban hip-hop magazine whereas I feel that I have developed conventions by having a group of 5 people as my cover image.