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

Cover: 

My cover couldn't look extremely similar to many other R and B magazines that are around today as I challenged the convention of having a whole image fit the main over page. Rather than doing this I took my picture landscape which then meant that I added a boarder to the top and bottom of my image. Where as many R and B magazines do not use borders and just have the one main image covering the whole page. Although I have challenged the convention of having a boarder around the image I still wanted my magazine to have many of the typical conventions of R and B magazines as my target audience is going to be a mass audience rather than a niche target audience which is what unconventional music magazines will be targeting. Although I have challenged the convention of not having a main cover image that fits the whole page, I did follow the other typical conventions of R and B magazines. I have used the billboard magazine below to give examples are the ways in which my music magazine has used the conventions of a real media product. 

                               

The magazine fits in to my house style meaning that I am going to be gaining the attention of the correct target audience, the fact that these conventions have used on this magazine and have been successful means that if I follow some of the same conventions my magazine will be successful also. The way in which I've added my cover lines onto my cover is the similar to those on the Billboard cover as they have both been added to the left of the cover, however I also challenged this convention in order to make my magazine more simple. I added all of my conventions in one colour rather than having them in white, I also didn't add as many as I didn't want to make the section look messy in a way, as I would have been trying to add more information that I had space for. A convention from the Billboard cover that I followed was the main cover line. I wrote 'T.R.B' followed by a quotation that has come from the content of the magazine as they have done with 'Beyonce' and a quote that has been taken from the magazine. Again I wanted to keep everything as simple as possible, not adding anything under the quote or around it apart from the barcode. The way in which the cover lines have been set out clearly show what the main stories inside the magazine are going to be, I've also added a few important artists that are going to be featured inside the magazine below. 

I followed the conventions with the way the text has been added to the magazine cover however the convention that I developed and challenged was having the main image cover the whole page, instead I took my picture in a landscape position and added a boarder to it. I feel like doing this made the image stand out more as it causes it to be positioned directly in the middle of the page rather than covering the whole page. 

Contents Page: 

 

I used this contents page from Vibe as inspiration for the construction of my contents pace. One of the main conventions that have been challenged is the fact my contents page is going to be on two pages hence why it is still landscape, I have challenged the convention from the original vibe contents page as theres is portrait.  I used many similar ideas however made slight developments to the conventions that were being used, for example the word contents I moves the letters TS to the left as it would not work if the letters were user NT like done in the Vibe magazine as it would fade into one of the models tops, which would then prevent it from being as clear as it can. In order to keep to the house style I have used the same colour scheme of red, white and black as this is used in the Vibe contents page with a grey colour added also. Another convention that I followed like in the Vibe contents page is the one in which features was used in order to show what the magazine was going to contain. However I did not continue down to add the fashion section to my magazine like Vibe did. I felt like the writing on the Vibe contents page was hard to read so I made my clearer by using a different front, I also made it bigger,making it easier to read. I was still keeping the idea of sophisticated R and B in mind keeping everything as minimal as possible. I didn't add anything to the background of my image like Vibe did with the V as I liked my mise-en-scene so didn't want it to be covered by anything else. My target audience is people that are aged 16-34 I don't need to any many different brightly coloured things and clutter the page, as that is not what my audience are going to be looking for. My target audience is large meaning that I have to ensure that I am appealing to everyone in my target audience. I have used three males on the image however they aren't topless or posing in ways that would attract teenage girls more than the male audience however I want to gain the attention of both genders. Ive used the same edit on my picture of I did on the front cover, keeping the house style the same throughout.

My contents page challenges the convention of having the contents page portrait has mine is landscape which allows the full image to be shown without anything having to be cut. It also means that I could have my text a lot larger than they had on the vide contents page and more detail could be added as I had more space without it looking like I've tried to add too much information into a small space. 

Double Page spread:

For my DPS I used this edition of Q magazine as inspiration for my double page spread. Although Q isn't an R and B magazine Jay Z fits into the Genre of R and B meaning that people from my target audience would have read the magazine, so using the same format and ideas would still work. On the left Q used a different edit to their picture however I wanted to use the same edit that I had used on both my cover page and contents page, as this edit keeps to the idea of intelligent R and B, it also fits my house style. Q added information onto the image however I choose to continue keeping things simple by just adding the simple heading at the top of the image, clearly stating what the topic of the article is going to be about. As I added the letters T.R.B behind the writing I only made them faded in order to make it easier to read the writing that is on top of them. I followed the same convention to Q magazine as the layout of the magazine is simple however has everything included that it needs. I wanted to make it a lot clearer and a central point of the DPS who the main feature was however as Jay Z is so known it doesn't need to be outlines as much hence why there is a small heading with his name on above. In order to keep the house style the same I kept the font of the word 'contents' and 'T.R.B are back' the same. Rather than adding anymore text to my image I have a small section on the right that is in bold, rather than placing it onto the image. 

Out of my three products my double page spread follows the typical conventions of R and B music magazines the most as there has not been many conventions that have been challenged and developed like I had done on the cover and contents page.