In what ways does your magazine use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of existing magazines?

I feel that with my magazine cover I have successfully been able to use, develop and challenge forms & conventions of existing magazines. With my magazine being targeted towards a Grime target audience, it really allows me to emphasis on challenging forms and conventions of other magazines purely because Grime is such a niche market with a low fan base compared to other commercial musics such as pop.

However there are forms & conventions I have followed, and the reason for this is that I feel they have to be, as if not, your magazine could fail because of it. These two forms & conventions are organization/tidiness and a house style choice of colours. This means I have conformed my magazine like others to make sure all the text is very clear and big for the reader to see from the shelf, similar to other magazines such as NME who have a very predominant title, but if we also look at other magazines from my research such as ‘GQ’ or even ‘Q’ they may use different colours for different editions, however the magazines always have a limited amount of variations in colour perhaps 3 or 4, generally 5 at the max. The reason I have used this for my magazine is that it gives off a tidy and formal aura from the shelf. Evidently my reason to include organisation as one of the forms that I have followed is so that my audience are able to clearly read from the front what the magazine contains but at the same time withholding the most important information which acts as an incentive for the customer to purchase the magazine.

I also feel that I have managed to develop conventions through the creation of my magazine cover at the same time, one of these is the recognizable side banner and logo following my masthead, if we look at other magazines which are extremely popular i.e ‘Q’, ‘GQ’, ‘NME’ & VIBE – they do have clear mastheads, big & bold titles, however they do not have a convention or form which I feel I have managed to develop, which is the introduction of my banner and logo. Down the left hand side you can see my black and red banner, one of the advantages from the way I have developed this is that if I change my form of ‘house colours’ in a different edition, I am able to implement these colours in both my banner and logo which then allows me to conform.

Finally I have challenged forms & conventions in my magazine by taking other forms & conventions which have been used by the major magazines and implemented it into my front cover but with my own style, take for example my large image – most magazines which have a feature article on an artist will have a large image of them on the front cover, and from my magazine you can see this, however what I have also done is cover my layer white, and then erased the white to give the grey background a loose appearance like a shadow. The idea is to show that the artist has come from the light with the white surrounds but also has  a grey effective shadow showing that he still has his ‘Grimey’ personality about him.

Advertisement