Evaluation : Question 1

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

What I realised whilst in the process of making my magazine is that a lot of aspects of my magazine would naturally be similar to real media magazine in order to attract a certain target.XXL magazine was my main inspiration behind my magazine, being an an urban hip-hop magazine I felt that there were a lot of similarities within the type of content we feature and the type of reader we would have so I used this almost like a template or starting point for my magazine but making changes throughout to fit my style and my audience.To understand their forms and conventions I looked at a variety of XXL covers and I bullet pointed the things that they repeat or highlight throughout all of their magazines. 

• Red, white and black colour scheme
• Masthead uses the same red box and white text format
• fonts usually thick and bold
• Main image very unique and attention grabbing 
• Minimal coverlines
• Informal language 

By highlight the things that made them standout as a magazine I was able to see how somethings could appeal to a certain audience like for example I found out that language choices on the front of the magazine has to be altered to fit the type of person who's going to read the magazine so with my magazine I kept it informal as I was target a similar audience to XXL but the difference was mine is a more younger audience who is really into hip-hop music but their also very streetwise, tough and business savvy so I had to find a way to balance that raw aesthetic that XXL has with a more sleek and well put together style that would appeal to my readers.As shown in the photo above, I mimicked the same format that they used in their masthead but instead I used a thicker font and titled the masthead vertically to add a little bit of edge which is something that I think challenges their forms as I don't see that fitting in with their type of magazine.

I feel that my product definatley uses the forms and conventions in comparison to real products but I feel that in order for my product to feel like a realistic album it had to fit in what is going on in real media.As well as that, I also think that with XXL and my  magazine having the same target audience its inevitable to have similarities as I feel our readership would look for similar things in something that they would want to buy and read