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

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

In all of my photography I have used young women as the model however instead of conforming to the norm of the magazine industry of highly sexualising young women by making them wear skimpy clothing, thick makeup, and sleek hairdos and posed inappropriately, I have shown a different more wholesome side of young women. The country theme has enabled me to challenge the convention; I have presented the young women in my magazine as fresh faced and natural. My front cover model appears to be real girl, she is shown with frizzy hair, natural make up and clothing that would not be unusual for a teenage girl to wear, this all challenges the norm put allows a highly positive atmosphere to be developed. This empowering atmosphere continues on the double page spread as a very natural girl with unhidden freckles and a young, vibrant yet normal outfit.

I have used pretty young girls as my model which does abide by the age convention of magazine industry; the convention is to show something that people would want ot look out and something that is pleasant to look at such as something that looks nice and young. By showing someone who is young also stops people thinking about things which people like to stay away from such as age, death and illness. I only showed young attractive people to stick to these convention.

The models I have chosen are all white; this conforms to the convention of the country music industry being dominated by white people. I have conformed to this convention to allow the country music theme to flourish as presenting a black or Asian person could confuse the audience as unfortunately any white people have the connotation of being involved in country music.

I have enlarged upon the convention of thinking that all teen audiences have short attention spans and do not want to read great lengths of formal language. I used fairly informal language throughout my magazine to appeal to the stereotypical ‘slacker’ teen and I have broken up any large pieces of text using colour, images and enlarged writing. This all joins to create the overall conformity to the convention of seeing teenagers as lazy.

I have used the rule thirds convention strictly as by using it I hoped to create a better designed product, this convention is in place in the design world as it can make a better design so I abided by for the good of my product. In some small places I have strayed from its strict guidelines to create small areas of originality to make my work more interesting.

I have created a colour scheme and kept with the socially accepted form of having linking complimentary colours. By keeping with this form I will create a more generically aesthetically pleasing product which will be liked by many. All my colours are pastels and link throughout, however on each page the main colour of the page i.e. pink, green or blue is shown all over the page so that entire page ties in and complementary colours are used alongside it.

Another conventional design form is floating which is the concept of making sure no design feature or text is on the edge of the page and that everything is enough inside to be anchored to the page. I have floated all my work, meeting with this form to allow my work to appear better quality.

The last design form I have stayed with is the form requiring all ends of the texts to be a full line or phrase and not just a word or two words. If it is just a few words hanging below they appear out of place therefore a whole line looks better, I have stuck with this form to make my work look better and more professional.