This is my first evaluation question for my media product. The question is, 'In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?'

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
I do believe my magazine “THE PAUSE II” has the qualities of a typical pop magazine,
however the pictures is a big issue as it contradicts the main style and layout of the magazine.
My magazine is based on the genre of pop, a genre which covers many different attitudes,
styles and beliefs. Pop is probably one the hardest genres to pull off for a magazine as there’s
so much that can be put in and so many different cultures of pop, meaning it is hard to focus
on just one aspect of it. One of the main reasons of which I believe my magazine is of the
typical genre is because of the artists involved.
Another way in which my magazine conforms to the conventions of music magazines is its
house style. In my research,I discovered that bright colours are all about the pop culture,
along with either black or white being feature colours. Therefore,I decided I would use a
turquoise green and a deep purple. By using two colours, I was not sticking to just one gender
but both so the magazine would draw in readers from both genders. My house style is clearly
visible throughout the whole magazine, with cohesive and consistent use of colour and fonts.
This is further supported by the masthead, “THE PAUSE II” which is in a bold font to help it
stick out and to keep that consistent house style as of the colour of the font (deep purple). I
decided to play around with the slogan a bit and in the end it came out as,“the pause that
refreshes music”, I chose this because I think it is not a usual slogan for a magazine and it
‘stuck out from the crowd’. My cover has got a picture of ‘Nikki Z’, the reason I decided to
use a single artist rather than a band on the cover was because I felt the pop genre has more
popular single artists out there than bands. As I have seen on many different magazine covers,
I have placed a banner of the list of bands that are included in the magazine, however this is
not the whole list, but more like four to five names.
The contents page of my magazine involves most of the social media, including, Instagram,
Twitter and Facebook. This is one of the best features to encompass in the magazine, as it
helps to sell the magazine to the readers worldwide as so many people are on social media. I
gave the contents page an organized structure, in order to make sure of the possible chance of
the readers being overwhelmed with the amount of information thrown in their face. I used a
variety of different images to represent what the content of the magazine was and the
contrasting aspects of the genre. Many existing magazines have images with backgrounds,
however I felt like I didn’t take a decent set of pictures that characterised my magazine, but
more with a studio white screen background which didn’t help to portray the genre. From my
research of previous magazines, I found that the page numbers are further than how many
pages there actually in a magazine, so from this I ordered the pages and who was going to be
featured on the pages accordingly, of course having my main artist ‘Nikki Z’ on the feature
article as my magazine didn’t have that many pages. I placed a subscription box on the
bottom right corner of the magazine, this of course encourages as many readers as possible to
come forward and take a look at the magazine and hopefully enjoy it. The more people that
subscribe the higher the readership. An editor’s note is also another big feature of a magazine
which could be included, therefore I felt it was important for readers to know what the
editor’s compassion and goal was when editing the magazine.
I only had one double page spread in my magazine as I felt there was no need for a big
introduction to my article; however I did feel it was dependent on the genre you were doing to
decide whether or not you wanted another double page spread before the feature article. The
feature article includes a big images on the top left corner and a small images in the actual
article. It also has pull quotes, which is another important convention of a magazine. For
these,I tried to use text from the articles that would make the audience wonder why those
particular quotes were pulled out. Again I used the same cohesive house style that was

2. featured in the whole magazine, from the front cover to all the double page. What the
interviewer was saying in the deep purple text and the artists’ words in black as normal text.