Evaluation 1

  Q1. HOW DOES YOUR PRODUCT USE OR CHALLENGE CONVENTIONS AND HOW DOES IT REPRESENT SOCIAL GROUPS OR ISSUES?  

The media product I decided to make for my main task magazine was a Flower magazine. The magazine overall uses many conventions which an ordinary flower magazine would use because using conventions that are already implied and widely understood is a scope which any magazine can gain along with this I wanted to make it exclusive and different from the rest of the magazine. The colors were bright as it and eye catching as it targets a young audience.

I used a unique font for the masthead on my cover page and for the rest of the cover lines, I used different fonts because using too many different kinds of fonts would attract the viewers’ attention as to what is written at various spots.

Since target market for flowers reaches across all genders, Women appear to be more likely to crave roses than men, coinciding with , children too love flowers and their scents , I used colors like pinks, light green and white font to make the magazine bright and colorful.

 I used direct mode of address for the picture of a flower to make the magazine look more engaging. However, I did not match the flower looks and design colors with the color theme of the magazine. That is how I challenged a convention because it would have been too much color coordinated then. I did not want to limit things like colors and design. I used graphic elements like the barcode on my cover page because I wanted my magazine to have an aesthetic look but at the same time I wanted to keep it elegant and did not want to overuse the elements, or stuff the page with a lot of design.

Furthermore, one the conventions which I applied to my front cover is that I used cover lines which are only related to the flower shops. Such as ‘ Count down of the best flower shops in Town'and ‘Get Auxillary offers on Valentine's’. will attract audiences. This is a major convention which flower magazine use in order to target the right audience by using conventions which appeal to them.

The main cover line which I used ‘SUMMER GALA’ , is a statement which tells the audience immediately what the magazine is about, in just a sentence. Another cover line, ‘Get your Own Custom made Flowers’ shows that you can have flowers the way you want, which all shops do not offer.

The strap line is placed right at the bottom of the magazine which conventionally are placed on most top and the bottom. This is because the strip holds the significance in telling about the genre of the magazine, it builds character as well as brands the product. Another magazine convention I used is, ‘ Spring in Light Jasmine Decor' Tips on How to Die your own custum made Bouquet’. This also tells the audience that there isn’t any limited range of flowers and they can order any type of they want according to their event theme.  

For the contents page, most magazines use 4-5 pictures but in Flower magazines, it is often 1 picture , taking up most of the space. This is done to create a catchier look than several small images scattered across the page and also, because the concept of Flower magazines is based on promoting different unique flower designs and I followed that concept.

The double page spread is one of the most important features of the magazine when a reader opens the magazine. I used both the pages to elaborate on how a flower is defined by using conventions of using big and bold text as the page heading and using the drop capital to navigate the readers and create attention to the paragraph. This creates interest to the readers who want to know more about what the article is featured about.

In conclusion the codes and conventions I have applied to my magazine have been used in such a way that they add meaning to the product.